With news this morning that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has offered $44.6 billion for Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), here are some of the early implications it could have for mobile.

Consumer: Yahoo has made a better consumer play in mobile, while Microsoft has focused on the enterprise, making the two a good fit. One of Yahoo’s big pushes is in mobile search, where it’s on the third generation of its Go application. However, it has struggled to get user adoption. Although it has a number of deals with handset manufacturers, often times the application is removed by the carrier before it reaches the consumer.

Carriers: On the other hand, Microsoft has strong relationships with the carriers. For the last several years, it has been fine-tuning its Windows Mobile operating system, and made some serious progress, albeit mostly in the enterprise. Windows Mobile phones are available from 160 mobile operators in 55 countries, and Microsoft expects to sell 20 million Windows Mobile licenses this year.

Search: In addition, both companies, along with Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and a series of startups, are all fighting to be a major search provider on the phone. Microsoft has a partnership with Sprint; Yahoo has a partnership with T-Mobile UK and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD).

In general, it seems Microsoft is struggling on the consumer side of the business. Its suite of applications under the Windows Live suite are just now catching up to where Yahoo! and others are in terms of advertising and local search. In Microsoft’s announcement, it says: “Our combined ability to focus engineering resources that drive innovation in emerging scenarios such as video, mobile services, online commerce, social media, and social platforms is greatly enhanced.”

This comes at an important time in mobile. Beyond the iPhone ripples, Google is making significant progress. It’s not only succeeding in getting applications on the phones, but it is garnering a lot of attention for the upcoming consumer launch of Android, its mobile operating system that will compete with both Microsoft and Yahoo.

Dianne adds: Still mobile search is a field that is not a slam-dunk for any of the firms. Google may have got its advertising program AdWords as well as its mobile search up and running, but there have been complaints that both are far from finished products, with search results not being as relevant as they could be, and AdWords unable to track conversions accurately on mobile phones. Indeed, some have even posited that Yahoo’s mobile search is a better user experience.

A Yahoo-Microsoft tie up might, however, provide the leverage that neither has really been able to muster up against American operators. In fact, to show how powerful the operators remain in this equation, you just have to look at the fact that while Yahoo Go runs on about 250 mobile devices, and already comes preloaded on some phones made by Motorola (NYSE: MOT), LG (SEO: 066570) Samsung and Nokia (NYSE: NOK), carriers in the United States actually strip the software from the phones. Currently, no American carrier offers phones with the Yahoo software installed, meaning that American mobile subscribers have to actually seek Yahoo Go out and download it themselves—something that severely hampers its uptake. Outside of the US, Yahoo has done a number of deals with European, Asian and Latin American networks where its OneSearch product is the default search portal for the mobile operators.