Yahoo! Inc., the Internet company fighting a proxy battle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn, yesterday signed agreements with Smart Communications Inc. and Digital Mobile Philippines Inc. to provide its mobile-phone search software.

The two Filipino companies are among the five providers in Asia that inked similar agreements. The other three mobile carriers are India’s Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., Hong Kong CSL Ltd. and Vibo Telecom Inc. in Taiwan.

The operators will make Yahoo! the “preferred” search service on their web sites designed for subscribers to visit using their handsets, the Sunnyvale, California-based Internet company said in a statement.

Mobile-phone subscriptions in India and other Asian economies have surged as rising wages make handsets and wireless services affordable to more of the region’s consumers. Yahoo!’s larger rival, Google Inc., has said that by 2011 it expects to process more web queries from handsets than computers in China, which is the world’s biggest mobile and Internet market by users.

Yahoo!’s partnerships with wireless carriers “should benefit all parties, producing a higher level of profitability and deeper consumer engagement,’’ David Ko, managing director for Yahoo! Connect Life in Asia, said in the statement. The Internet company also said it agreed to sell advertising on web sites designed by Malaysia’s Maxis Communications Berhad and India’s Idea Cellular Ltd. for their handset users.

Yahoo! had previously already reached mobile-search agreements with India’s Reliance Communications Ltd. and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. India added 8.21 million mobile-phone users in April for a total of 269.3 million subscribers, according to government data. (Bloomberg)

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Yahoo! Inc., the Internet company fighting a proxy battle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn, yesterday signed agreements with Smart Communications Inc. and Digital Mobile Philippines Inc. to provide its mobile-phone search software.

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