Bangalore: Yahoo and Apple are getting closer as the two companies are discussing on a deal incorporating more content from Yahoo News and loading Web properties onto Apple devices, besides expanded Siri partnership.

For now, iPhones come preloaded with apps powered by data from Yahoo Finance and Yahoo’s weather site. Some Yahoo data also helps powering Apple’s voice activated ‘assistant’ Siri.

However, no immediate deal is taking place say sources to The Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo has been thinking on ways it could help Apple with Web-search results for less reliance on Google Inc. The discussions show CEO Marissa Mayer’s tendency to increase Yahoos popularity on mobile devices.

Analysts have estimated that more than 200 million iPhones and iPads will be sold this year and Yahoo will see some potential Web traffic rise that would transform the company into a bigger mobile software player. But this idea would take some time as Yahoo has partnered with Microsoft Corp since ten years which powers Yahoo search engine and Apple uses Google search engine that comes by default on iPhone and iPad browsers.

The two companies got closer last year after Apple updated Siri on tapping data from Yahoo. Meanwhile Apple is looking on ways to partner with more companies to reduce its dependence on Google. But the company still claims that the search giant remains the best, not willing to sacrifice on quality. On the other hand Google, Amazon and Facebook compete with Apple on many fronts. Yahoo in no way overlaps with Apple as it doesn’t build hardware, operating systems or mobile – app store. It was also clear when Mayer put it across stating that the company must rely on ‘forging partnerships’ to boost usage of its services.

At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Mayer said that there is an opportunity for partnerships and that is the main focus. Yahoo has 200 million monthly visitors to its services through mobiles and there is a need to grow usage to increase revenue which has been standing at $5 billion a year.