Steve Ballmer, Microsoft‘s CEO, made a surprise appearance at the ongoing BlackBerry World Event and made an announcement according to which, starting today, Microsoft Bing will become the default search and mapping engine on RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones.

The mapping services will be integrated at the core level and will also feature location based services and commerce functions. On the same note, Ballmer said that Microsoft will continue to invest in the BlackBerry platform — alongside its own Windows Phone platform — of RIM with which Redmond had a strong partnership in the past.

With Nokia bringing its maps to Bing — the Ovi Maps will be driving Bing as of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership — we wonder whether BlackBerries will benefit from Nokia’s technology through Bing.

Source: RIM

Via: MobileBurn

Image: BerryReview