Scott Wingo Business: Bing for Mobile Embraces HTML5 for Android, iOS

Microsoft has updated its Bing for Mobile app for iPhone and Android, adding some new features and bringing the experience more in line with the experience offered on Windows Phone.

"Today's update uses HTML5 to blend the mobile browse experience with the app experience so you get a consistent and fast mobile search experience," read a Nov. 2 posting on the Bing Community blog, "whether you're using m.bing.com from your browser or the Bing app."

Microsoft's Windows Phone tightly bakes Bing's search engine into the interface, blurring the line between traditional browser-based search and the platform's "Metro" interface. Evidently, Microsoft seems interested in extending aspects of that experience to other smartphone platforms.

"Rather than tightly binding functions into a mobile client, we want to embrace the drive towards exposing our functions via an HTML5 experience," the blog post added. "Using HTML5, our goal is to build a mobile experience that leverages the unique capabilities" of platforms such as camera support and voice search, while "making the functions the apps can provide consistent across the platforms."

In addition, this app update also includes Deals, which the blog describes as "one-stop deal shopping and convenient mobile phone access for local deals from more than 100 deal providers across the United States." It makes Bing's video domain, launched in October on m.bing, available on the iPhone. The Android version of the app offers a combination of real-time transit routing and news. And the Maps/List Split View allows users to synchronize a list, such as directions, into a single view alongside a map.

Microsoft is apparently aiming to release the same experience for Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices at some unnamed point in the future. For the moment, the Android and iOS apps are available on their respective app stores.

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