Steve Ballmer's CES 2010 Keynote

Bing, Car-Tech and Windows Mobile

Ballmer says that Microsoft made ‘incredible progress in search, with Bing’ in 2009. ‘In just a few months we added over 11 million new users, grew our share and introduced a consumer service which is really resonating with people’. Ballmer says that this was done by re-defining what search should do. In its full-fat version (which is pretty much only available in the US) Bing delivers results for all kinds of things from a search – search for a specific camera, and you might get a section of the results page dedicated to reviews, and another on shops that stock it and so on, rather than a single page-ranked list of sites. Bing is supposed to anticipate what users are really looking for, and so aims to negate the need to go back refine a lazy or hazy initial search – it’s a laudable ambition (well, sort of, possibly rewarding laziness isn’t the most noble of pursuits).

‘We refer to Bing as a decision engine, because we’re trying to provide tools to people to make the decisions they want to make and to accomplish the tasks that are most important to them.’ Ballmer announces that Bing will become the default search engine on HP systems in 42 countries, and MSN will be the default homepage. It seems like a play straight from the old days of encouraging Internet Explorer adoption by aggressively bundling it with Windows, but he seems Microsoft will wrestle market-share from Google if it can just get people to try Bing out.


Microsoft has also been hard at work in the automotive industry. Ford will the first to roll out the next generation of Sync, and the next round of technology built on the Windows Embedded Auto platform. Fiat has recently sold its one millionth car with EcoDrive technology. EcoDrive, which has been downloaded over 80,000 times is an application that can show you how you drive your car and the routes you take, and aims to show you ways to save money and fuel by analyzing that data. Finally, Microsoft and Kia recently announced a new in-car communications and entertainment system built on Windows Embedded Auto called UVO.

The Zune HD is, apparently, getting rave reviews in consumer and technology press. When Rich let me play with his for a while, I have to say I wasn’t impressed with the feel of the device, menu system or screen size, but clearly others were. Ballmer says that Microsoft will expand the Zune music and video service to other Microsoft platforms – so perhaps you’ll get it on your Xbox, and possibly even on your PC or laptop.

Ballmer will now try to convince the room that Windows Mobile 6.5 was a great success. There’s new and exciting Windows Mobile phones being launched all the time he says, but I still blame Windows Mobile for my inherent fear of smartphones, even if I was using an old version. Let us know your thoughts on Windows Mobile in the comments – state which version you’re talking about though please.