BlackBerry to use Bing as default search engine

Microsoft's Bing will be the default search engine for Research in Motion's BlackBerry smartphones and PlayBook tablet.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made the announcement during a surprise appearance Tuesday at the BlackBerry World trade show in Orlando, Fla., said journalists in attendance. The show runs Tuesday to Thursday.

Bing will also be the default BlackBerry map application and will be "deeply integrated" at the operating system level, Ballmer said.

Bing, launched in 2009, had a 13.9 per cent share of the online search market in the U.S. in March. That put it far behind Google, which had 65.7 per cent and slightly behind Yahoo, with 15.7 per cent.