Steve Balmer showed up at Blackberry World and gave the news that Microsoft was planning to invest seriously in RIM and thus create a stronger partnership with the Canadians. Microsoft is going to invest in the Blackberry platform so that Bing becomes the default search engine. According to a Microsoft spokeswoman, they are planning to introduce Bing as a default search engine for US and international select markets starting from this years’ season holidays.
It appears that Microsoft has found a way to gain popularity in the mobile segment, namely by working with big players, with all of them that is. Microsoft have already closed a deal with Nokia, have introduced Bing to iPhone, they are currently working with Samsung, HTC and LG and the list can go on and on. Microsoft is everywhere and they have focused their attention on Blackberry now.
It appears that Google is taking hit after hit from Microsoft. Bing is now the default search engine for Blackbery phones and also the only search engine that can report small growths in the number of users every month. Let us also mention the Microsoft-Nokia collaboration and the fact that Bing is officially installed on iPhone. No information concerning the collaboration is available, but one could presume that much money is being pumped given the great loss reported by Microsoft’s online division.
The same Microsoft spokeswoman added that Bing would be default search engine and map provider for RIM devices but carriers could chose to use another search engine for mobile search.
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