Although Ask.com is priding itself on its fourth place ranking among world’s search engines with its 90 million users, in reality the Q&A website is struggling to maintain its 4% coverage of the market, while Google is controlling over 60% of it.  Now, with the release of the free application Ask for iPhone, the development strategy toward mobile platforms is evident.

To help justify its new strategy, Ask.com published an internet research conducted by Harris Interactive on U.S. users. It concluded that mobile users navigate more on their handsets devices instead of computer and their need for local and immediate information is more sought.

Ask for iPhone, their new mobile app, is the predecessor of Ask Mobile GPS software, which is now using the same platform, mentioning that the new application is focusing on local information despite the general  and useless one.

Following the market research of mobile consumer, it was revealed that 40% of the users seek fresh information, stemmed immediately from the local sources. Considering these premises, Ask.com is now trying to answer itself to mobile users’ needs.  This is something we’re seeing incorporated into a number of search-related efforts, with a rising eagerness towards marketing around these trends.

Ask.com has also revived its strategy early this year, for a more socially driven approach. With the trial version of the new development, Jeeves in person will answer to the questions of the users – giving a real friendly reply. Ask.com is currently the biggest Q&A database and the new features make it more human-alike.