Mobile search Abphone goes on-deck for all three major French carriers

Abphone, provider of ad-sponsored search for entertainment and multimedia, has become the first search engine to go on-deck for all the major French carriers. Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom all use the service, which allows users to search for images, wallpapers, videos and games.

From the release:

Pierre Scokaert, CEO of abphone declared: “The future is bright for abphone because vertical search is ideally suited for the mobile web. In 2009, we look forward to extending our search offer to address new verticals, such as music and news. We also plan to increase the viral spread of abphone, and we aim at appearing on an increasing number of operator portals, to repeat in other countries the success we met in France.”

What we think?

Abphone has gone through a lot of changes recently. New deals, a new white label search option, going from off portal to on portal and back again. It seems to have worked out for it though - I can see how its ability to cover all the bases would be very attractive to carriers.