It looks like Microsoft and Nokia, beleaguered giants of the mobile industry, are forming an alliance in order to defend against the alternative smartphone onslaught. Details are scarce at the moment, but tomorrow is guaranteed to see us better informed. What we know is that Microsoft has been expanding the platforms Office 2010 will work on, which now includes several browsers. I think it’s safe to assume that Nokia will soon be an official partner, not limited to accessing the app suite via the browser.
The move is a smart one, I’d say, since they face major competition in the mobile office arena by the rapidly evolving Android and Google Apps (among others). I don’t say from the iPhone, because really, who’s going to do real work on that thing?
That’s great news. And i totally agree that Nokia has to do something if they don’t want to go down in the mobile/smartphone market. Wonder if this will replace the free quickoffice license you get on e-series phones.
“I don’t say from the iPhone, because really, who’s going to do real work on that thing?”
That’s either really cleverly ironic or your Steven Ballmer moment…
Because nobody was gonna buy an iPhone in the first place were they?
iphone fanboy alert!
Have you ever heard of docs to go?
I have all the functionality of any other smart-phone on my iphone. I even have hosted push exchange mail with mail2web. I use this to save and edit attachments in docs to go.
Just as I was pondering the demise of Microsoft Windows Mobile and thinking how Nokia lost to the iPhone, Pre and Android by getting too comfortable in the chaotic land of Symbian… it seems that Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dumbass are joining forces together to do the old “we are so big, we can shove our mediocre offering down everyone’s throats in lieu of any innovation”.
That aside, this is perhaps the most unexciting news item I’ve heard ever since Microsoft announced they are taking Office to the interwebs. (Fantastic idea! Did they come up with it all on their own?)
You have got to be kidding. Nokia must be absolutely desperate.
Office was completely non-functional on PDAs with much larger screens. There’s no application for office on this small a screen. Whose going to waste his or her time trying to read a spreadsheet or a Word document on this postage stamp sized screen? I couldn’t read my monthly household spreadsheet on a PDA, who could possibly ever finds a use for this in business?! Office on a small screen is a failure.
This may represent a mere market failure by Microsoft but it could be a death knell for Nokia.
I agree – sounds like a possible last ditch effort to save Nokia and increase (as if they needed to) the presence of Microsoft.
How in the heck are you suppose to create a professional anything using a Qwerty keyboard?
Oh that’s right, webspeak is the new and preferred language for all…
I bet you wrote that with a Qwerty keyboard :)
@Edward
Why couldn’t you read a document or a spreadsheet on a 800×480 screen? And the business will find use for it, of course. People already read/edit docs on the go with their phones.
Could you be a bit more specific, why do you think offering the world’s most used office suite on Nokia phones would be a “death knell” for Nokia? Did you bother to think about it even for a second?
@Holly
“..create professional anything using a Qwerty keyboard..”
I assume you meant “..without using a Qwerty keyboard?” Nokia has plenty of phones with qwerty keyboards and more to come.
Of course I thought about it dd. Asking if I “event thought about it for a second” an absurd and reactionary question and it offers no substance to the conversation.
And, I did give specifics. I specifically said that one cannot even manage a household budget spreadsheet using Office Mobile -on a much larger screen. Since you asked for more specifics, Word Documents of any substantial size are unwieldy too. Not only is the document viewing difficult, but if the document has a number of graphics, you are going to have far more problems.
Unless you’d like to offer specifics dd, please refrain from asserting that others who actually have offered specifics, have not, lest you reveal your thought process to be amateurish, unprofessional and that of a blowhard.
Of course I thought about it dd. Asking if I “event thought about it for a second” an absurd and reactionary question.
And, I did give specifics. I specifically said that one cannot even manage a household budget spreadsheet using Office Mobile on a much larger screen. Since you asked for more specifics, Word Documents of any substantial size are unwieldy too. Not only is the document viewing difficult, but if the document has a number of graphics, you are going to have far more problems.
Unless you’d like to offer specifics dd, please refrain from asserting that others who actually have offered specifics, have not, lest you reveal your thought process to be amateurish, unprofessional and that of a blowhard.
Oh, and to answer your other question. Nokia is already experiencing troubles. A classic mistake in business is to adopt something “big” rather than something “useful” when you are attempting to recover from a dismal financial state. It often signals the end of a company because the cost versus the return of the “partnering” relationship that is intended to save the company’s prospects, overwhelms the company’s ability to offer competitive deals and manage their other costs. This is a great example of what you DON’T DO.
For an example of what you do: Look at the Palm Pre. Palm was on the ropes, too. Did they throw Microsoft at the problem? No. They went back to work and designed a better phone. Their new phone (Pre) addressees the needs of a whole new user base and embraces the new direction in mobile phone use, as well as invigorating and exciting its existing customers.
Palm’s move was the smart move.
Is that specific enough for you?
I’m sorry I was a bit rude. I was mostly asking specifics about the “death knell” part. I had a bit of trouble extracting all that information you now provided from those two words.
“Oh, and to answer your other question. Nokia is already experiencing troubles.”
I partly agree with you on this. It was a bit slow to react to this unprecedented touchscreen-craze and the S60 UI is a bit clunky to my tastes too, although perfectly functional and not half as bad as it’s made out to be. It will be better though, and the new contender Maemo is about to enter the game.
But Nokia is far from dead. Even if it completely stopped making smartphones, it would still sell ~100 million phones a quarter. People seem to think it’s only smartphones that matter(maybe because the US based RIM, Apple and Google don’t do dumbphones) but they still represent a small amount of all phones sold.
“A classic mistake in business is to adopt something “big” rather than something “useful” when you are attempting to recover from a dismal financial state. It often signals the end of a company because the cost versus the return of the “partnering” relationship that is intended to save the company’s prospects, overwhelms the company’s ability to offer competitive deals and manage their other costs. This is a great example of what you DON’T DO.”
For Nokia, this deal is only about corporate market share. Microsoft wants to extend it’s reach to mobile by providing tools to integrate with its corporate tools(SharePoint, Office etc.), and Nokia is targeting RIM’s business users with this.
Microsoft needs Nokia here more than Nokia needs Microsoft. WinMo doesn’t have enough market share so MS partners with the one who has most to push it’s corporate tools. This is a win-win situation.
“For an example of what you do: Look at the Palm Pre. Palm was on the ropes, too. Did they throw Microsoft at the problem? No. They went back to work and designed a better phone. Their new phone (Pre) addressees the needs of a whole new user base and embraces the new direction in mobile phone use, as well as invigorating and exciting its existing customers.”
Nokia has problems, like every other manufacturer. This collaboration is a means to solve one of them. But this is not some last straw thing where Nokia expects Microsoft to solve all its problems.
If we talk about the UI which people often perceive as the most serious problem with Nokia smartphones. It’s already public information that there will be a complete rewrite of the UI from a clean slate. It just doesn’t happen overnight. Something that Palm also did.
If you look carefully, you’ll see that Nokia has a clear vision on how to address the shortcomings it currently has.
Office on Nokia, hmm
But how can that help Nokia/Microsoft, when we already have a office tool for Android in place?!
check this:
http://yampblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/android.html
Yes, Microsoft should abandon Office right now, it’s no good to them because there’s already OpenOffice. Nokia should stop making phones, it’s no good to them because other companies already make phones.
Seriously, the internets are so full of logic fail nowadays it’s not even funny.
Love Nokia (hate MS), but I really don’t see much value in this deal. Nokia might sell millions of handsets worldwide, but the percentage of the E series (business line) is nothing compared to BlackBerry or WinMo. They also could have just ported OpenOffice to Symbian.
Nokia’s strategy to save itself should not be with silly attempts like this, but to adopt Andriod, move to capacitive screens, and push for a single unified application to manage your phone. I have a dozen apps on my desktop to manage my Nokia (photos, music, sync, contacts, etc…).
I got rid of my iPhone [of 9 months] to go back to Nokia, but I’ll admit it’s just until a decent unlocked Andriod handset comes out with AT&T 3G compatibility.
4.7M Eseries devices were sold compared to 7.8M Blackberries(Q2 for Nokia, couldn’t find RIM Q2 results so it’s Q1) That’s less, but it’s not “nothing”. And you can probably use it on other S60 devices too, so that’s double the amount of Blackberries(quarterly sales numbers)
I think Nokia might be slowly moving to capacitive touchscreens at least in some markets. Don’t know for a fact though. But Nokia _is not_ adopting Android. Instead, it will renew Symbian and also bringing Maemo to phones, but Android, never.
If you want a one Nokia desktop app, you might want to check this out, it’s still beta though.
“Nokia Ovi Suite 2.0 is intended as the only computer application you will need from Nokia. It will eventually replace the current Nokia PC Suite and its variants like Nokia Ovi Suite 1.x and Nokia Nseries PC Suite. Nokia Ovi Suite integrates also the main features from Nokia Photos, Nokia Software updater and Nokia Map loader.”
http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/nokia-ovi-suite-20
That sounds sweet. Nokia has to do something to keep up w/ everyone else in the mobile/smartphone market. However im not to much of a fan of the Microsoft platform on the phones scene i have had problems w it.
@dd: Oh, and to answer your other question. Nokia is already experiencing troubles. A classic mistake in business is to adopt something “big” rather than something “useful” when you are attempting to recover from a dismal financial state. It often signals the end of a company because the cost versus the return of the “partnering” relationship that is intended to save the company’s prospects, overwhelms the company’s ability to offer competitive deals and manage their other costs. This is a great example of what you DON’T DO.
For an example of what you do: Look at the Palm Pre. Palm was on the ropes, too. Did they throw Microsoft at the problem? No. They went back to work and designed a better phone. Their new phone (Pre) addressees the needs of a whole new user base and embraces the new direction in mobile phone use, as well as invigorating and exciting its existing customers.
Palm’s move was the smart move.
Is that specific enough for you?
That’s good news for Nokia users.
They are the best partner.
For more details on Office web apps, check out the team’s blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/officewebapps/default.aspx
There’s also a great video on the Office Facebook Page about the web apps: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1125277366841
Cheers,
Kate
MSFT Office Outreach Team