Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) revamped its Bing for Mobile search application for iPhone and Android smartphones, introducing a series of new features promising to streamline the user experience and spotlight relevant local information. The features include Bing Streetside, a new mapping solution promising a multi-level street panorama of a given location, enabling users to take a virtual walk through the surrounding area, complete with an overlay identifying business listings, street names and storefronts. A new Bing check-in tool allows users to simultaneously update their location status across their Facebook, foursquare and Windows Live Messenger accounts, while a new Plan feature lets consumers share local search results directly to their Facebook Wall, making plans according to friends' comments and "likes."
The Bing for Mobile update also introduces an improved Autosuggest tool, allowing users to easily refine their search efforts -- after determining their evening destination, OpenTable and Grubhub integration offers a solution for reserving a table or ordering takeout within the Bing app. Other new features: Location-based reminders, real-time transit updates spanning 11 metropolitan North American cities, speedier Voice Search and the camera-enabled Bing Vision visual search tool.
Last month, Microsoft launched Bing for Mobile for Android across all major U.S. operators following the end of its exclusivity agreement with Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless. Verizon Wireless and Microsoft signed a five-year search deal in 2009, with Microsoft providing portal, local and web search as well as mobile advertising services across the operator's devices. After Verizon preloaded the Bing search engine on the Samsung Fascinate this summer, execs quickly shot down the rumor that the carrier would swap Bing for Google on all future Android releases: "We have a relationship with Microsoft, and Bing is the search engine on our multimedia phones, but we have never said it would be exclusive on all of our devices," Verizon Wireless told Engadget.
This article originally published here. Get your mobile content industry briefing here.
Related articles:
