Yahoo Inc. yesterday made public the extensive makeover of its mobile strategy as the battle intensifies to gain platform dominance in that channel.

The Internet giant’s new mobile strategy includes services to help publishers and developers mobilize their offerings, drive adoption of the mobile channel through product offers and improve the mobile Web experience through personalization and advertising. A new Yahoo Mobile homepage and a mobile widgets platform were also announced.

“Yahoo is renovating its mobile efforts and it seems like a logical move on its part as rivals Google and MSN are also trying to do more with mobile,” said Neil Strother, mobile analyst at JupiterResearch. “Yahoo is moving to mobilize and monetize.”

Yahoo made the news public at the Consumer Electronics Show, the nation’s largest gathering of technology and software executives. An estimated 140,000 people are supposed to attend the show this week in Las Vegas.

The new Yahoo Mobile Developer Platform, designed for developers to create mobile widgets, is also meant to help companies offering online content and services to “go mobile.”

The platform provides developers with tools to write code once and then publish their content across devices.

“We are focused on bringing the best mobile Internet experience to billions of users around the world and to do that we have to open up our platforms and provide them to developers and this will accelerate the growth of choice for users and, as a result, will foster greater adoption of data services,” said Ojas Rege, vice president of mobile products for Yahoo.

“MySpace, eBay and MTV News are the first to try out our mobile widgets,” Mr. Rege said.

“The new homepage for Yahoo Mobile is a big step forward for us and we focus our developmental effort on what we think will help the consumer,” he said. “The new page is personalized and allows users to pick and choose what they want access to and it is visually exciting.”

Yahoo’s new mobile strategy will include the development of new products and enhancement of offerings such as Yahoo oneSearch for mobile.

“From a user standpoint this is a chance to put a widget on the phone and widgets make sense for mobile because not everyone wants to launch their browser,” JupiterResearch’s Mr. Strother said. ”[Yahoo] can reach 2 billion phones in the world.”

Mr. Strother said he believes the announcements are a response to Google’s Android platform.

“Yahoo wants to be a fast mover in the early rounds of mobile marketing,” Mr. Strother said. “Since its rivals Microsoft and Google are trying to grab people on their mobile phones, it only makes sense Yahoo is trying to do the same.”

Yahoo recently refined and enhanced oneSearch by adding new features to make finding information on-the-go faster and easier.

The company also launched a mobile homepage, which is still in beta at http://beta.m.yahoo.com. It is open and customizable.

Another feature of Yahoo Mobile’s new homepage is that it will offer updates of what’s new since the user’s last visit. It also will give previews of favorite online content and links to frequently-used services.

Meanwhile, Yahoo Go 3.0 is an enhancement of the 2.0 version. The difference is, Yahoo Go 3.0 is an open environment offering Yahoo mobile widgets developed by third-parties.

Sound familiar?

Yes, this Yahoo announcement comes a few months after Google, T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and other Open Handset Alliance members’ collaboration on the development of Android, an open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. (see story)

The company has also launched display advertising in Yahoo Go 3.0 beta. More improvements in mobile monetization tools and services are planned this year.

“We are targeting the developer community and the consumer,” Mr. Rege said. “We believe we will accelerate the adoption of mobile and will open people’s eyes to all that can be done on mobile.”