Microsoft and Nokia have entered into an alliance that is "set to deliver a groundbreaking, enterprise-grade solution for mobile productivity". They will begin collaborating immediately on the design, development and marketing of productivity solutions, bringing Microsoft Office Mobile and Microsoft business communications software to Nokia’s Symbian OS smartphones, starting with the business-focussed Eseries. The two companies will jointly market these solutions to businesses, carriers and individuals. Read on for further details on today's announcement.
Read on in the full article.
Q: What do Microsoft and Nokia have in common?
A: They are both frightened of Google!
The Apple fanboys will be all over this
This is Nokia's stab at RIM - to capture the Enterprise market by providing Office solutions to the businessman.
@Suraj V
Is the whole E serries not a stab at RIM?
Am I the only one who gets a feeling that this can only benefit Microsoft in the long run?
They do have this rather long history of embrace & extend...
1. Keep people away from Iphone and Android whilst tying them to Microsoft solutions on a "neutral" platform
2. Get a year or two to improve Windows mobile platform
3. When the customer base is securely tied to this environment, offer a "better" Microsoft Office experience on their own mobile platform
4. Profit, all competing platforms are sudenly one step behind in that now so all important Microsoft Office compability for phones.
Word, Excel, OneNote are all fine and good (within the constraints of a handheld's screen, anyway). What surprises me is there's no mention of plans to improve S60 support of common PIM functionality. What about categories? What about improved syncing with Outlook or other desktop and cloud calendar/task lists/contact managers?
Will this collaboration actually produce a smarter "smart phone"? Or, maybe it's just a way to port some Microsoft products to Nokia phones. Too bad about that, if that's all this alliance produces.
@apple faynboys.
There will be Office for iPhone, and Apple isn't exactly going to refuse it.
@Microsoft getting the best part of the deal.
Don't forget that Nokia will be considered more American and less foreign because of this deal. They might be able to monetise it.
QuickOffice and Dataviz must be thrilled... I wonder if this is the reason for the free upgrade to existing E series users?
GJW wrote:
They might be able to monetise it.
Monetise? Which language is that?
@desmondie
"Monetise? Which language is that?"
The lingua franca that us 90% of netizens that are non-native english speakers use,
it's called Broken English 😉
desmondie wrote:Monetise? Which language is that?
English.
Americans tend to rape that language and add Z's into it, as in monetise vs. monetize.
According to one source at Microsoft, the first step will be pre-installing the current Java based Office Communicator client on Nokia ESeries phones, beginning next year.
This client offers availability status information and instant messaging that were mentioned in the announcement:
http://mobile.microsoft.com/office/communicatormobile/
Later those new native clients for Symbian devices will follow.
I think this is excellent news for Symbian developers, as it will help in getting the Symbian platform noticed by lots of companies. This will in turn increase demand for vertical business applications a lot.
'ground breaking soutions' and Microsoft? Mwuahahaha
I really want to dump Symbian now. If only Apple or Google would make a nice compact phone instead of ridiculously supersized KFC-fed slabs then I would have an alternative to buy.
Alas not and I am stuck with the devil.
I think the first poster is correct. This is running scared of Google. It is also an attempt to bolster itself against RIM.
Have to feel a bit bad for QuickOffice, it seemed a very capable product.
I don't like this idea @ alll.... waste of time I think. As someone pointed out in another thread here on the site... microsoft is just really not that good @ developing light-weight unbuggy apps @ all. A parternship like this is likely to just harm the Symbian platform. I can't imagine how much memory is gonna be swallowed by any apps/solutions they come with and how many bugs. And to think this is somehow aimed @ blackberry?
Lame, at best I think.
I think it is very good for Nokia. Nokia has good market in smartphone. MS has good market in desktop PC software. If MS integrate its application in Nokia's smartphone then phone will be really smart. It will auto connect to PC, auto update calendar, emails, status update, your documents.
Then customer will prefer such a smart phone.......