MS Office Mobile

Microsoft and Nokia have fulfilled their promise and released the full-featured mobile Office for Symbian. Earlier OneNote, Lync 2010 and PowerPoint Broadcast came to Symbian and now they are joined by the productivity apps Word Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile and Excel Mobile. The apps allow you to view and edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and provide more correct work with formatting, than for example, third party office suite QuickOffice, which is also available on Symbian. The only strange thing is that Microsoft haven't integrated this Office for Symbian with its SkyDrive app to provide global access to user documents. As you know, the strategic direction of the Nokia-Microsoft alliance is manufacturing Windows Phone smartphones, but the Symbian-smartphones are still widely spread. And apparently, in order to keep this user base and ensure their smooth transition to Windows Phone, the companies have released this mobile office.

Of course, to say that the mobile operating system Symbian is "still alive" - is not quite correct. This is still the world most popular operating system for mobile phones and the second most popular for smartphones. But it is not a secret that its popularity is quickly going down. There are several reasons for this decline: Android and iOS expansion, Nokia's deal with Microsoft and its transition to Windows Phone, decline of the mobile phones share in favor of smartphones. But the main reason, in our view, is that Nokia has become too unwieldy company. And it looks like Microsoft will buy it. Few days ago we received another confirmation of this: Microsoft announced the mobile version of its office suite for OS Symbian. Given that Nokia has already agreed to make Windows Phone its primary OS, Microsoft had no sense to create Office for Symbian (the alternative operating system). No sense, if Microsoft was not sure that Symbian will become its property in future.

Today Microsoft has officially unveiled its new mobile operating system Windows Phone 7. Despite the gloomy Gartner forecasts, it will be very interesting experiment, and we can only compliment Microsoft for this brave step. The company had the more simple way - to defend its niche of corporate mobile OS, where Windows Mobile had found itself. According to recent Forrester studies, Windows Mobile along with the BlackBerry is still leading the enterprise market, despite the iPhone and Android attack. But apparently, Microsoft was not happy with the role of niche player and made a bold attempt to sit on two stools at once.

Today, Microsoft has unveiled a new version of its mobile operating system Windows Mobile 5.0. And it seems that even though Microsoft had entered the mobile market later, it will be dominating on it. Palm and Symbian can't compete with Windows Mobile 5.0 first of all thanks to the mobile Office applications. The new Windows Mobile provides improved mobile office, that is now called Office Mobile, which in addition to previously available Word Mobile and Excel Mobile includes the presentations software PowerPoint Mobile. But unlike the mobile Word and Excel apps, PowerPoint Mobile allows only to view documents but not edit them. In fact it's not so important, because hardly anyone will create presentations on a Pocket PC. In addition, Windows Mobile 5.0 adds support for SQL Server, that enables developers to create new mobile client for business applications on this mobile platform.

Today, Microsoft has introduced to the world the mobile version of its Windows operating system - Windows CE and mobile (pocket) computers, called PocketPC on which it works. These handheld computers will be manufactured by Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, Casio, Philips, Hitachi, LG, NEC. The major component of the new mobile platform for business users is the mobile version of Microsoft Office - Pocket Office. It includes Pocket Word and Pocket Excel. The mobile Word and Excel can open and edit documents created in the main desktop Office applications. Of course, their editing capabilities are poorer - only basic functions are available. Windows CE also includes personal organizer, consisting of three modules: calendar, contacts and tasks, e-mail client and the mobile browser Internet Explorer.