Microsoft to bring Office to Nokia phones

By Nate Lanxon on 12 August 2009, 6:26pm

Nokia and Microsoft have announced they will put their heads together to bring Office to Nokia's mobile phones, starting with the business-focused E-series range.

Starting now, the Finns and Yanks will work on bringing Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote to the Symbian OS (that's Nokia's phone operating system). At the moment, this is one of the major (read: only) advantages to using the Windows Mobile OS.

Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile will also bring IM and conferencing apps to Nokia phones, and it'll be this product you'll see released first, in 2010. Realistically, it could be 2011 before we get Office Mobile itself on Symbian. These are cakes that take a whole lot of baking.

On a conference call this afternoon, Nokia was quick to dismiss speculation that this was a partnership aimed at slapping the iPhone around. "This is really about creating a formidable challenge for RIM rather than anyone else," said Nokia exec Kai Oistamo, referring to RIM's BlackBerry email phones.

In the 'mobile professional' world, having Microsoft Office on its phones puts Nokia in a much stronger position to compete with RIM -- and, funnily, Microsoft and its Windows Mobile OS.

For Microsoft? Well, it gets its suite of apps on a pile of Nokia's 200 million phones, strategically also keeping people within the desktop world of MS Office.

By the way, Microsoft's Mac division has a conference call set for this Thursday. It makes Office for Mac among other things. We wonder: Office for iPhone? If Microsoft wants to take down RIM and BlackBerry, it wouldn't be the worst move in the history of moves.

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n47h4n 12 August, 2009 21:13

Android please.

Nyadach 13 August, 2009 09:19

MS support Android? haha yeah thought it was getting icy :P

Office on iPhone would probably sell...it definatly needs it! Although it is odd they are targetting RIM so massively, that part of this whole thing is the bit which doesn't directly make any sense considering RIMs doing a damn fine job of shooting itself in the foot at every chance it gets.

anonymous 13 August, 2009 09:32

What Nokia needs is Outlook. Nokia's email solutions are temperamental and not fully functional to say the leas.

Jamma 13 August, 2009 15:44

on the subject of android, does it have a google docs app? because i'd buy the next qwerty on in a heartbeat if so

anonymous 14 August, 2009 14:37

This is a great development!
Let?s face it; the business world revolves around the Microsoft Office suite. So having Office software available on smart phones will be a godsend to busy individuals who are always on the move, no longer restricting them to the confines of the office. It will be particularly useful on road to important meetings as it will allow PowerPoint users to flick through slides and view notes to practice their presentations, or even edit and tweak their PowerPoint files on their morning commute or business trip.