Microsoft and Nokia today announced analliancethat will see MS Office products such as
Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote ported to Nokia's
business-oriented Eseries mobile phones.
The two firms will start
porting the applications to the
Symbian operating system platform immediately, with commercial
release next year.
"With more than 200 million smartphone customers globally, Nokia
is the world's largest smartphone manufacturer and a natural
partner for us," said Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's
business division.
Nokia's executive vice-president for devices, Kai Öistämö,
described the deal as "a shared vision for the future of mobile
productivity".
The deal builds on a 2007 arrangement to run Windows Live on
Nokia phones. It also continues Nokia's work to optimise access to
e-mail and other personal information with Exchange ActiveSync.
Öistämö said Nokia intends to start shipping Microsoft Office
Communicator Mobile on its smartphones from next year. Other Office
applications and related software and services in the future will
follow.
These will include:
• The ability to view, edit, create and share Office documents
on more devices in more places with mobile-optimised versions of
Office applications
• Enterprise-class instant messaging and presence, and optimised
conferencing and collaboration with Microsoft Office Communicator
Mobile
• Mobile access to intranet and extranet portals built on
Microsoft SharePoint Server
• Enterprise device management with Microsoft System Center
Stephen Drake, vice-president of mobility and telecoms at market
analyst IDC, said the mobile worker population would reach one
billion worldwide in 2011.
Market analyst Gartner today
reported Windows Mobile's market share dropped year-on-year to
9% in the second quarter of 2009. According to Gartner, Nokia holds
51% of the smartphone market, down from 57% a year ago, having lost
market share to Apple's iPhone and Google's Android platforms.
There were also unconfirmed
reports that Nokia is hedging its bets on Symbian as it was
strengthening a previous alliance with Intel to develop the open
source Maemo mobile operating system.