Microsoft search tool Bing released updates for its BlackBerry mobile app, so as to remove incompatibility issues with devices running BlackBerry OS 5 and OS6.  The release also included a couple of new features: for starters, the Bing Homepage Hotspots minimizes the amount of time searching for hotspots offered daily, plus additional info on each subject of an image search result.

More importantly, the Flight Status Instant Answer now informs users on thir flight status–all they have to do is enter the flight number.  Bing’s flight search tools have been a big focus for Microsoft in rolling out its search tool, becoming a feature focused on immediacy and in many ways, outshining Google’s regular and mobile search offerings.

Bing Image Search has also been improved, with some quality rendering of photos via mobile devices, while the What’s Nearby feature finds listings of local establishments such as restaurants, shops and sights.

The launch comes as a response to recent research on customers’ satisfaction with the BlackBerry brand concluding that the BlackBerry cannot equal Apple or the Android smartphones on apps and OS. According to Electronista, Research in Motion has sold 75 million BlackBerries in its history, of which 10.1 million in the last quarter of 2010. Yet, the numbers will stagnate or even go down if RIM does not make a stand.

RIM acknowledged the fact that business clients now have a wider variety of choice and might leave BlackBerries behind. For this reason, RIM Vice President Pete Devenyi admitted that “corporations have to manage those devices differently or there is the possibility that RIM might extend capabilities to make it easier for those corporations to manage those devices as well.”

A few years ago, the company launched BlackBerry Connect, a program that allowed businesses to use their BackBerry servers to manage certain devices when those devices communicated using BlackBerry protocols.

See full details on Bing’s update here.