Ex-Mobile Brits in the frame

TWO OF the UK's former mobile greats - Arun Sarin (ex-Voda) and Peter Erskine (ex-O2) - are tipped for new jobs. Actually Sarin is a better fit for the Yahoo job than most commentators appear to realise.

Although Sarin is of Indian origin, besides running Britain's biggest company (Vodafone), he's also run a couple of US based ones. He got the Voda job because he'd run Vodafone Airtouch in the USA before.

But back in 2000, Arun Sarin had left Airtouch to take the CEO position at an Internet infrastructure company called Infospace.

But there's another good fit. We all know about Yahoo's fights against the Beast of Redmond and against Google. But few appreciate how well Yahoo is doing in mobile search.

At the beginning of the month, Yahoo announced that it had just signed a deal with Virgin Mobile which meant that its coverage of the British population using mobile search had reached 80 per cent from about 76 per cent previously.

Yahoo was citing figures collated by M:metrics (now part of Comscore). So mobile search is definitely one area where Yahoo is displaying great strength. So why not pick a guy who knows mobile like the back of his hand?

Oh yeah. And Sarin survived a nasty shareholder revolt at Vodafone so he's no stranger to uppity shareholders demanding value.

Meanwhile, Peter Erskine who oversaw the transformation of BT Cellnet into O2 and its subsequent sale to Spain's Telefonica, has obviously got a bit bored.

He's going to join Ladbrokes, the bookmaker, in May. Although, Erskine confesses only a passing interest in horse racing, guess what one of the most popular applications for WAP has been?

You've guessed it. While only a tiny minority bothered to master the delights of WAP services, one minority that did were horse racing fanatics. So Erskine has skills which Ladbrokes will definitely appreciate.

Especially as its WAP servers appear to be down right now. µ