Microsoft Brings Office to Nokia Symbian Smartphones

Owners of Nokia Eseries will be the first to benefit from a global alliance signed between Microsoft and Nokia designed to bring the Redmond company's mobile productivity solutions to the mobile phone giant's Symbian devices. Marking a first in terms of the scope and nature of their joint endeavor, the two companies revealed that the partnership was set up to kick up a notch the enterprise-grade solutions for mobile productivity. In the video embedded at the bottom of this article you will be able to see Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop and Nokia Executive Vice President for Devices Kai Öistämö discuss the new alliance.

“With more than 200 million smartphone customers globally, Nokia is the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer and a natural partner for us,” Elop noted. “Today’s announcement will enable us to expand Microsoft Office Mobile to Nokia smartphone owners worldwide and allow them to collaborate on Office documents from anywhere, as part of our strategy to provide the best productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser.”

Nokia smartphone users will be able to leverage not only Microsoft Office Mobile products, but also Microsoft business communications, as well as collaboration and device management software. More specifically, the partnership will focus on bringing Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile to Nokia smartphones as soon as 2010, allowing users to enjoy instant messaging, presence, conferencing and collaboration capabilities. In addition, the Redmond company will also work to ensure that Nokia devices will permit users to view, edit, create and share documents via Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote products optimized for mobile phones.

The collaboration work between Nokia and Microsoft will ensure that corporate portals developed with SharePoint Server at the basis, both intranets and extranets will be accessible from mobile phones. And to top it all off, enterprise grade device management will be available with Microsoft System Center.

“The scope of the alliance between Microsoft and Nokia, and potential value for the enterprise and individual is significant,” added Stephen Drake, VP of Mobility & Telecom at IDC. “By bringing Microsoft’s productivity solutions to Nokia’s large customer base, the two companies should be better able to serve the needs of the growing mobile worker population, which IDC estimates to reach 1 billion worldwide in 2011.”