Redmond, Washington — Software monopolist Microsoft’s latest effort to bring Bing to the masses — today unveiled the new Bing for iPad, the company’s first app for Apple’s tablet. And it is gorgeous and well-designed, which one analyst dubbed it a “killer app” that beats Google’s “hands down.”
The moment you launch the Bing iPad app, which follows by more than a year the December 2009 debut of a similar app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, lets users enjoy themselves facing whatever beautiful background photo was selected for the day and, since the app is location-aware, displaying the resulting pages and also aggregates a wide range of Web content within its wrapper, where you will notice that the homepage’s weather report and maps sections will be updated to suit you right away.
Bing for iPad is more than just a search application, although search is at its core. But it is not a browser, at least officially, which gave Microsoft the entry into the App Store: Apple bars browsers not built on the open-source WebKit rendering engine from its online app market.
The app delivers all of the polish and sharp looks that Bing has accustomed to be known for to the iPad’s large display, and depending on what you are searching for, the app will fill your screen with images, relevant or trending search results, movies and videos, and more.
Microsoft said the Bing app is “developed from the ground up for touch.” It has got buttons that are easy to hit with fat fingers. It has built-in swipe navigation. It makes everything big enough to see on the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen. Content is revealed within the Bing app, and does not open within the iPad’s native browser, Safari.
“This is a killer app,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence. “There is abundant information, which is optimized for the tablet and you can browse very easily. Bing did a really terrific job with this.”
Bing for iPad displays its News content in a grid format.
You can tap any of the main sections–weather, news, maps, movies or finance–to browse them in full. Beseides, there is a drop down menu with additional selections–images, videos, shopping, and of course your history–if you want more choices. Moreover, searches can be conducted by typing or speaking. There is also a “Trends” icon that lets you click on a picture and get the latest headlines, including breaking news, gossip, fashion, sports news, etc.
“The experience is designed specifically to capture the fluid and intuitive nature of touch on a large, high resolution screen — empowering you to quickly browse news, movies, weather, local business listing and much more,” he added. “And, you can do it all with the swipe of a finger — no more back button.”
The Bing iPad app’s search result page is structured similarly to the original website’s. The new app, though visually, at least, puts Google to shame. However, that is an unfair comparison, considering Google does not have an app that is optimized for Apple’s iPad.
Although Bing, which has struggled to compete against Google in the search market, accounted for 13.6% of the market in February, according to comScore. When Yahoo’s share is added to Bing’s — the former now uses the latter’s engine to deliver results — the pair own a 29.7% share, less than half of Google’s 65.4%.
The free Bing for iPad app is available for download today in the Apple App Store.
Check out this video demos below:
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