Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a surprise appearance during RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis's keynote. The Financial Post quotes Ballmer as saying, "This goes way beyond a search box," when discussing the new partnership.
According to Financial Post, the Bing/BlackBerry integration will take place at an OS level and Microsoft will be working to support RIM technology in its cloud offerings.
When Mashable reviewed the BlackBerry PlayBook earlier this month, the unit shipped with Bing as the default search engine and with a stand-alone Bing Maps application. In hindsight, that should have been our first big tip that a more formal announcement between the two companies was coming.
Since launching Bing nearly two years ago, Microsoft has worked to build more partnerships with mobile handset operators. Select Verizon phones powered by Google's Android OS shipped with Bing as the default search engine. With iOS 4, Microsoft added Bing as a search engine option (Google is still the default and powers the Apple Maps app).