Although Microsoft is doing quite well for itself in the desktop search market, they are still struggling to improve their position in the mobile search market.
While Microsoft has now gained the number 2 position in desktop search according to reports from Nielsen, their performance in mobile search has not improved significantly.
In the beginning of 2009, Microsoft had signed a five year deal with Verizon, to make Bing the default search engine on Verizon mobile phones, with a view to improving their mobile search rankings.
In spite of this deal however, Verizon continued to have the right to use Google as the default search engine on their phones which were powered by Google’s Android software. As a result of this, Verizon is using the Google search engine on 7 of their 8 Android phones, thus leaving Microsoft ‘out in the cold’ in a manner of speaking.
Reports from comScore show that Microsoft’s share in the mobile search market has grown from 1.2% to 1.7% between July 2009 and July 2010. However Google has grown from 9.3% to 14.4% in the same time period.
Microsoft however has said that the deal with Verizon has been made keeping a long term view in mind.
They say that 7 new Android phones are due to be released by Verizon this fall, and they will use Bing as the default search engine.
It is certainly crucial for Microsoft to improve their mobile search market share if they hope to be able to corner a part of the ever growing mobile advertising market.
