There has been an announcement by Research in Motion of a deal with Microsoft who will invest in their search engine Bing and maps for BlackBerry. In addition, two new Bold handsets were unveiled by RIM.
The company has announced that new BlackBerry handsets will include “deep” integration with Bing Microsoft’s search engine. Microsoft’s Chief Executive, Steve Ballmer said at the BlackBerry World Conference in Orlando, Florida, that his company would invest “uniquely” in Research in Motion’s products and that Bing will become thoroughly integrated within BlackBerry’s new operating system, OS 7, as well as being the default provider for search and maps. Ballmer said, “This goes way beyond search box,”.”It’s about real tools that help real people get things done.”
Bing’s voice-activated search engine, as well as the street-level mapping technology was demonstrated in a video. Microsoft said that the partnership between them and BlackBerry means that Bing Apps would get preferential placement on the BlackBerry App World app store.
Also announced at BlackBerry’s conference was of new apps for the PlayBook, including video chat and Facebook and two new Bold handsets that will be using the forthcoming BlackBerry OS 7 operating system, which unfortunately comes without Android Apps and Flash Support – see my article yesterday.
Both devices feature the renowned BlackBerry keyboard together with a brilliant touch screen and are 10.2mm thick, running a 1.2ghz processor, which makes them the fastest devices produced by BlackBerry yet. The smartphones that will launch sometime over the summer also feature improved Office integration, near-field communications and better web browsing. The only difference between the two models is the CDMA network compatibility on 9930.
As explained in the article by Matt Warman of The Telegraph, Analysts CCS Insight described the new devices as “much-needed updates”, and said that the Bing deal enabled BlackBerry to address weaknesses, but also showed that the Bing search engine was becoming a rival to Google.
