Talk to anyone with a smartphone, and they’ll tell you that searching and browsing the Internet on a mobile device is vastly different than using a desktop web browser. On a desktop, you may want to review a full page of information, be able to open multiple tabs simultaneously, and use a mouse to navigate it all. On a mobile device, you’re using your thumbs and looking for the most relevant information as quickly as possible.
The Bing for iPhone application, released yesterday by Microsoft, aims to provide a user with everything they might need within one mobile application. Searching for movie showtimes? Done. Bing for iPhone will display the most relevant information and showtimes for that movie and allow users to open other related applications, like IMDB or Fandango. It’ll also open Netflix should you decide to stay in rather than go out to the movies.
Want to grab dinner before the show? Bing for iPhone can help scour the Internet for restaurants, displaying Yelp reviews, and enabling users to open OpenTable or Yelp for more information or to make reservations. They’ll also help you catch a ride on Uber, should you need it.
Microsoft hopes to take on Google on the iPhone. By adding functionality that opens other mobile applications directly through using the app, a feature not yet provided in Google’s iOS application, the company is betting that this improved user experience lures thumbs away from Google.
