Microsoft to port Bing to the iPhone

A software wrapper to make it easier to do Bing searches from the iPhone apps deck is in development

Microsoft is developing a software wrapper to better enable iPhone application developers to add Bing search results to their applications, a Microsoft official said on Wednesday.

The wrapper, based on Objective C, is being tested now and is due out in a few weeks, said Alessandro Catorcini, senior program manager for the Bing search engine at Microsoft, in an interview at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, Calif.


"Right now, there is an unneeded step to climb to integrate Bing results in your iPhone app but we want to make that smooth," he said. "We want to make it as easy as link [a] library, create an object -- bam -- you're done."

Bing was unveiled in June as a re-release of the Microsoft Live Search engine, and it was tipping point in the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. Microsoft earlier this week at the conference emphasized linkage between mobile devices and search capabilities as future expectation for search.

Paul Krill | InfoWorld.