Yahoo CEO highlights mobile future despite internal difficulties

Global Business

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is painting a positive picture, as the tech giant holds its annual Mobile Developers Conference in San Francisco.

CCTV’s Mark Niu reports from San Francisco.

CEO Marissa Mayer’s biggest weapon is Flurry, a mobile data analytics platform that she helped acquire in 2014.

Flurry data revealed that the average U.S. consumer is spending more than four hours a day on mobile, 91 percent of that time spent on apps.

“Last year, I spoke about how we were thinking about being mobile first at Yahoo. Today that’s a given. This year we’re being really focused on mobile engagement first. This means how can we more effectively capture the share of those four hours on mobile each day,” Mayer said.

Mayer says one of the answers is to increase personalization of apps, making Flurry the perfect tool for developers who are vital to the company’s survival.

But Mayer did not mention the company’s internal difficulties. Yahoo recently announced it would be laying off 15 percent of its 11,000 employees.

When all the cuts are made, Yahoo expects its workforce to be 42 percent smaller than it was in 2012, when Mayer first came aboard.

Yahoo has also indicated it’s exploring the sale of some of its assets.

Watch as Mayer discusses growing mobile engagement during the 2016 Super Bowl.