With Windows 10 Mobile just around the corner, Microsoft’s finally ready to continue its efforts in the mobile business, despite the below-expectations performance of Windows Phone.

Recent statistics have shown that Windows Phone dropped to 1.7 percent market share, but according to Microsoft, its existing mobile platform is doing a lot better in Europe, where it’s very close to reaching 20 percent.

It’s not a surprise that Windows Phone is more successful in Europe, as the Old Continent has always been a friendlier market for Microsoft in the mobile industry, but Redmond says that local performance exceeded expectations and numbers provided by third parties.

Bing is the default search engine

This information has been revealed by Rik van der Kooi, Microsoft’s Corporate VP of advertiser and publisher solutions, at Bing Ads Next, where he has discussed the company’s Bing strategy. He has thus pointed out that Windows Phone’s performance in Europe is key to its search engine because Bing is set as default on the mobile OS.

“There is no silver bullet for us. We were small on the PC as well once, too,” Kooi is quoted as saying by SearchEngineLand.

Bing is not only the default search engine on Windows Phone but it’s also the service that brings Cortana to life. What’s more, Bing is the one service powering non-Microsoft products, such as Apple’s Siri, while also serving as the default search engine on Mac OS X.

At this point, Bing has a 20 percent market share in the United States, and Microsoft claims that it’s ready to continue investments in this business, despite the indisputable domination of Google.

“A year ago we didn’t have a significant syndication business. We’re seeing 20 percent growth year-over-year,” David Pann GM of search advertising states.

But obviously, Windows 10 is at the core of the Bing strategy, and Microsoft expects the search engine to grow as more people deploy the new operating system. Windows 10 is offered as a free upgrade to consumers running Windows 7 or 8.1, but still available for a fee for enterprises.