Yahoo! Punts, Seeks Nokia Partnership

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (TheStreet) -- Yahoo!(YHOO) has invited the press to a briefing by CEO Carol Bartz in New York on Monday, presumably to introduce a partnership with Nokia(NOK).

The combination will take the form of Yahoo! content, email and search on some Nokia phones, according to BoomTown blogger Kara Swisher.

The invitation to this landmark event (above) promises it will ring in a "new era in keeping consumers connected." Not to dim any of the bright lights on this showcase -- but really? "New era" from a partnership between Nokia and Yahoo!?

You can almost hear observers like Apple(AAPL) chief Steve Jobs saying, 'good companies sell products, bad companies form partnerships.'

And really, it's hard to think of two companies that have lost more than Yahoo! and Nokia during the recent rise of mobile Internet.

Nokia's lead in the smartphone market has been eroding at an alarming pace for two years as phones from Apple, Research In Motion(RIMM) and Google's(GOOG) Android effort have caught on with consumers.

And Yahoo! has been nearly nonexistent on mobile phones as Google search and Google maps have taken on an almost default status. Arguably, the only other player that may have come close to Yahoo's whiff on wireless is Microsoft(MSFT). And we know what those two have in common -- a partnership in search called Bing.

Bartz and Yahoo! don't have many more opportunities to reinvent the company for mobile. And Nokia, already three years late, has yet to answer the touchscreen call in a way that speaks to consumers.

Hopes are genuinely high.

No one, after all, wants to watch mobile choices narrow to Apple or Google. But still, the idea of Nokia and Yahoo! pairing conjures up something that Kodak and Polaroid may have thought about as the camera market started slipping through their hands a few decades ago.

--Written by Scott Moritz in New York.

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