Sprint and Microsoft Bring Convenience to Mobile Search
It’s the day after Thanksgiving — the biggest shopping day of the year — and you need a sandwich after a morning spent fighting the crowds. If Sprint and Microsoft have their way, you won’t use the phone book to find it. You’ll use your phone.
Last week, the two firms announced a partnership to bring Microsoft’s Windows Live Search, which returns local business information, to Sprint phones.
How does it work? Just enter your address, zip code, or city and state into your phone, along with a search term, such as “pastrami.” In response, you’ll get a list of every sandwich shop and grocery store in your neighborhood, as well as any ring tones, games, or screensavers that deal with eating.
In the future, Sprint will add features that let the phone determine your location and enter it for you, so you don’t have to fumble with a tiny keyboard.
“In recent years, the search box has fundamentally changed the way people interact with the Internet, but we have only just begun to scratch the surface for what search and live Internet services can do in the mobile space,” said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Online Services Group, in a statement.
Sticky Fingers
Berkowitz added that Sprint’s new service is designed to give users “the information they want, when they want it, where they are,” in a nod to the fact that today’s gadget users expect their information to move as quickly as they do.
William Ho, senior analyst at research firm Current Analysis, said that Sprint and Microsoft are selling convenience and not merely information. After all, local searching has always been available, although with more effort. “A person on their Sprint phone would just invoke their WAP browser and point their URL to Google,” he said. (A WAP browser is a Web…
