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Motorola taps Microsoft for Android apps

Thursday, March 11, 2010

All’s fair in love and war, and Motorola may owe its recent upswing to the Google-backed Android platform, but this week the resurgent handset vendor hopped into bed with Microsoft, to deploy Bing on Android devices.

Under a global alliance between Motorola and Microsoft, the US manufacturer will deploy Bing services on Motorola devices powered by Android, with the first offering launching in China before the month is out.

As part of the deal, Motorola users will get a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on their mobile browser and an enhanced search widget with Bing integration. There will also be a focus on Bing powered map functions on the Android-based devices. Devices that are already in market will be able to pick up the updates over the air.

Motorola said it is opening the doors for increased personalization and empowering its end users – a comment which may draw some fire in light of this week’s launch of the Android-powered AT&T Backflip in the US. The Backflip runs a crippled version of the Android-platform, which does not allow users to install unofficial applications. There are also a handful of AT&T specific apps installed on the device which cannot be removed by the user. Then again, the Backflip is not a Google-branded device so perhaps this is par for the course.

This news article was featured on Telecoms.com website.

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