New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wants to improve the company’s mobile search, which trails far behind offerings from search giants like Google and Bing. In her first one-on-one interview since being named CEO, Mayer spoke with Bloomberg Television about the future of Internet search technology, data portability and strategic partnerships. She sees personalization as the key to mobile for Yahoo.

“Given that we do not have mobile hardware, a mobile OS, a browser, or a social network, how are we going to compete?” she told Erik Schatzker at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “I think that the big piece here is that it really allows us to partner.”

“Mayer pointed to the company’s work with Apple and Google on their mobile operating systems, as well as what she called a strong partnership with Facebook,” reports PCMag.com. “We’re able to work with some of these players that have a lot of strength in order to bolster our user experience that we offer on the Yahoo site,” Mayer said.

Mayer believes that because many of Yahoo’s core functions revolve around daily activities — such as email, weather, news, photo sharing and games — the move to mobile is not a stretch, since most people want these features on their phones.

“I think whenever you have a daily habit and [are] providing a lot of value around it, there is opportunity not only [to] provide that value to the end user but to create a great business,” she said.

She believes customizing the experience is paramount for users, and pinpointing locations, for example, should be much more than promoting local restaurants. “If you actually know where people are and where they check in, there are all sorts of sophisticated and interesting things that you can go on to do,” she said.

“But there’s always more to accomplish, and Mayer has her eye on personalization — especially image and voice recognition and translation — as well as increasing privacy measures,” notes the post.

A video of the Mayer interview is embedded in the PCMag write-up and available on the Bloomberg site.