Apple approves iPhone Bing app
The Apple App Store has just approved a new Microsoft app which brings all of the features of the new Microsoft Bing search engine to the iPhone platform for the first time.
Microsoft had previously released a Bing application for its own little-used Windows Mobile operating system, of course, but it took a while longer to get the iPhone version up, running and approved by Apple. It is likely that similar apps for the other popular mobile platforms, such as Blackberry and Android, will come hot on the heels of the iPhone app, according to a PC Magazine article. The Bing app was released today and is a free download from the App Store.
The iPhone version of Bing appear to contains all of the basic features that a user gets from Bing’s mobile site, including image search, news results, driving directions, and maps, into a fairly easy to use application for the Apple mobile handset. Microsoft appears to have been paying attention to the search leader, and has included a voice search feature in its app, which has been a popular feature of the Google search app for the iPhone.
Although it is still far behind Google in the search wars, Microsoft’s Bing has won over an estimated 10 percent of the search market since it launched in June of this year. That number can be expected to grow, at least a little, when Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo’s search division kicks in sometime during 2010. Some of those Bing adherents are sure to use the iPhone, and it is those users at which this app is aimed, as well as at iPhone users that may want to give Bing a whirl on the iPhone as a test. Microsoft will hope those users will abandon Google and move to Bing on their PCs as well. Regardless of the apps for smartphones, Bing faces a steep uphill climb for the search and advertising clicks of computer users.
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January 22nd, 2010
It doesn’t work on the first generation iPod Touch. Whenever I try to install it says that is not compatible because the app needs a microphone.