We shed light on Microsoft’s first Live deal with Blackberry maker Research in Motion back in mid May. At the time, both had partnered to deliver Live Messenger and Live Hotmail to smartphone owners held within RIM’s embrace. Today the companies have announced a kind of extension to the contract to involve Live Search among some of the mobile applications present on the devices, including Blackberry Browser and Blackberry Maps. As with the companies’ previous agreement, the Live Search functions won’t be immediately present on Blackberry devices. “Available later this year,” is RIM’s estimation. Similarly, Live Hotmail and Live Messenger were at first mention said to be ready for a rollout in summer. That was before summer had arrived. Nevertheless, the Live Search feature is perhaps the most essential component to add to its partnership with RIM, as it is mobile search that is, particularly in location-sensitive scenarios, seen to be increasingly valuable. Microsoft’s primary target in the search space, Google, has made no secret of its desire to tap the advertising potential made possible with the increased ubiquity of small screens in consumers’ hands.
Of course, it has traditionally been the case that the Blackberry is the domain of business, which alone perhaps makes this arrangement among tech giants not so very impactful. Yet it clearly is the consumer that is in the sights of RIM with recent design releases like the Pearl, the Curve, the Bold, the newly announced Pearl Flip, and the much-anticipated “Thunder.” The advent of premium hardware from the likes of Nokia and Apple have only served to spur RIM in their direction. And so the financial incentive for RIM to sign with Microsoft - and vice versa - only grows with time. Today’s mention of the Live Search agreement also notes, as with the other services of Microsoft origin, multiple language support will be provided
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