Wednesday, May 04, 2011: At RIM's annual BlackBerry World conference in Florida on Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the announcement that Canadian smartphone maker Research In Motion (RIM) will use Microsoft's Bing services on new BlackBerry smartphones. "We're going to invest uniquely into the BlackBerry platform," Ballmer told the audience. "Bing will become the default search provider in the browser and maps" on BlackBerry devices, he said.
Matt Dahlin, director, Bing outlined the plans on the Bing Search Blog: "Central to this collaboration, BlackBerry devices will use Bing as the preferred search provider in the browser, and Bing will be the default search and map application for new devices presented to mobile operators, both in the United States and internationally. Also, effective today Bing will be the preferred search and maps applications with regular, featured placement and promotion in the BlackBerry App World carousel."
Dhalin also wrote that Bing is now shipping as the default search engine and map app for the Playbook tablet.
This move has come at a time when the much spoken about Microsoft–Nokia alliance is underway. Though the software giant stands to gain from the partnership, it's hard to assess if RIM also has anything obvious to gain. With Google being the popular search provider, many users would obviously prefer to stick with Google and might actually be annoyed when they would have to search results via Bing. |
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