It was free PlayBooks for all at the BlackBerry World Conference keynote presentation today, but that was hardly the biggest surprise of the morning. Taking the stage right after RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. That’s right, the CEO of Microsoft held court at a BlackBerry conference. Why? To announce a new alliance of course. RIM is now working closely with Microsoft to integrate Bing search at the OS level on BlackBerry devices. Eric Zemen, aka @phonescooper, captured the rather odd video (above) showing how the Bing-on-BlackBerry experience will work.
If there’s one clear conclusion to be divined from Ballmer’s appearance today, it’s that the mobile battle lines have been drawn. Microsoft signed an agreement with Nokia just last month to shore up its OS position with Windows 7. Now it’s supporting RIM in the mobile OS world in order to further its mobile search interests. Bizarre? Yes. But also very calculated. Microsoft was late to the mobile game, and now it’s aligning left, right, and center in order to combat Google and Apple in the space.
You can place your bets now on whether Microsoft’s mobile strategies will work. Certainly the company is taking a scatter-shot approach to the market, but that doesn’t mean one of those shots won’t hit.
In the meantime, here’s a sampling of some of the greatest tweets covering the RIM conference this morning – from the hilarious to the insightful:
@KevinCTofel: No news on the white PlayBook yet? Bummed.
@reckless Nilay Patel: Microsoft and RIM definitely feels like I’m taking International Relations again. Weak players forming alliances in response to a hegemon
@rossrubin: Bing on BlackBerry tastes more like Windows Phone 7 than BlackBerry.
@Gartenberg Michael Gartenberg: Ballmer translation.”The enemy of my enemy is my friend”
@Gartenberg: I really am in an alternate universe.
Correction, Microsoft was NOT LATE to the mobile game. In fact they were one of the first! They lost big to Nokia and BB in the past and did not respond to feedback from users!
Now they rebooted Windows Mobile and are so far behind it ONLY appears they were late!
That video was so low-key, I nearly fell asleep. I surely hope they don’t use the same approach in their real ads.
Another headline would’ve been “Battle for Third Place” — with iOS and Android being top two modern smartphone platforms, that’s the position RIM, Microsoft/Nokia, and HP are in currently.
True they frittered their lead big time. But I’m not sure they lost it to Nokia – different markets, different products. Blackberry, yes. However, MS was there own worst enemies in letting WinMo atrophy. It’s pretty staggering. Then again, Palm did the same thing. Speaking of Palm and Windows Mobile, my favorite phone of that era was the HTC-designed Treo 750. Wish it had been slightly slimmer, but otherwise it was a winner.
Windows Phone 7 has promise, but they need to speed up the updates and perhaps deliver some iconic hardware (via a partner) to gain traction/momentum.
Bing Search? That is the big “alliance”? Search isn’t new, interesting, or even remotely a feature anyone would use to compare new phones. Can you imagine choosing a phone because it supports Bing instead of Google? Can you imagine even caring???
For me, it emphasizes RIM doesn’t have much to talk about these days. Wake me when the Playbook offers a native email client. Regarding search, I only had interest in provider when Verizon forced Android phones to use Bing – kinda crazy considering Android is a Google property. But it sounds like updates allow choice even if Bing is the default on some handsets. Interestingly, my most relied upon iPhone feature is the licensed Microsoft Exchange that Google services utilize. There’s some irony or moral there somewhere, but I’m not sure what it is.