Research In Motion and Microsoft announced a new partnership earlier this week at BlackBerry World 2011. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took to the stage during co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’ keynote speech to announce that Bing would be the new default maps and search features on upcoming BlackBerry devices. It will apparently be integrated at the OS level with devices shipping for this upcoming holiday season but will also be added to current BlackBerry models.
It is likely that Microsoft will pay RIM handsomely for this new partnership (financial terms were not revealed). On its side, Microsoft stands to make more money (and keep that money from competitor Google) from these services due to its now larger customer base.
Rest assured that if Bing is not your thing (sorry, could not resist), it will still be possible to switch to other search and mapping tools.