“Top executives from Microsoft and Nokia elaborated on their new alliance in a conference call this morning,” Steve Lohr blogs for The New York Times. “The takeaway? First, the partnership is aimed initially at Research in Motion and loosening the hold that its popular BlackBerry e-mail software and service has on business customers.”
“Second, Microsoft is unbundling its strategy in the cellphone market, with Microsoft’s Office division free to step away from the company’s operating system business. And Microsoft is trying to use its powerful Office franchise — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, but also collaboration tools like SharePoint — to shift the smartphone technology competition to its advantage,” Lohr reports.
“But any assault will be a long-term challenge. The first Microsoft Office product to be on Nokia smartphones, which run the Symbian operating system, will be its Mobile Communicator, which allows business users to find and then communicate with colleagues by instant messages. That offering will come next year on one of Nokia’s E-series phones for business customers,” Lohr reports. “The full range of Office productivity and collaboration software will follow, and the two companies have pledged to jointly develop new applications, tailored for Nokia smartphones.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Two wrongs don’t make a right, “Office” is less important on mobile devices than Microsoft (and now Nokia) would like to think, and this team assault certainly doesn’t bode well when their “target” is *ahem* the wrong company.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Sara R.” for the heads up.]
I can’t wait for Microsoft’s new CallsForSure branding to come out with partner cell phone makers.
Why would anyone ally with Microsoft? Their track record with alliances is horrible. They usually end up doing more damage to their ally than to the common foe.
Using sharepoint for corporate sites will lock out iPhones and Android. Anyone not using Winmobile. That’s the strategy. Even if it’s web based, using Sharepoint will help lock out competing mobile devices.
excellent
let them destroy each other
apple will sit back and wait to pounce
like a SNOW LEOPARD
The starving dogs will be fighting over the unwanted scraps that fall from Apple’s feast! They are still not innovative enough to develop a product or service of their own to dominate. Sad. Very sad!
“NEXT year we’ll have IM”…yawn… Why is Microsoft still in the news?!?
I don’t understand why a “partnership” needs to be formed here? Why doesn’t Microsoft just write this application for all platforms other than the Blackberry? Wouldn’t it make sense to support iPhone OS, Android and Windows Mobile as well? I you’re going to attack an enemy, isn’t it much more wise to enlist the help of your enemy’s enemies? (Okay, not so much an enemy, but a competitor.)
I think Microsoft really needs to begin focusing on creating great applications for the mobile space and stop with the exclusive partnerships. I can understand that both of these companies are hemorrhaging market share and user base and that they think forming an alliance may help slow that down, but I think the days of partnerships like this are over.
Is Microsoft incapable of writing the applications? Or the Symbian SDK limited to the point that in order to get to required resources, you need the assistance of Nokia?
I just don’t get it or see the advantage of this!? Microsoft is starting seem like the company that can’t function or survive without the aid of some other company. Microhoo and Microkia.
I was not aware of SharePoint and what it did/does, so I went to the MS site (Shiver!) and here is what it says: “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.”
Now, would someone please translate what that all means? Thank you in advance!
Two behemoths dancing on each others’ feet.
What must it be like to see the inevitable mobile landscape just over the horizon, and know your bag is empty.
This is so lame…….I don’t think that even hardcore MS Office fans want to edit their stuff in a tiny 3″ screen, c’mon…
Microsoft is still pursuing its normal business strategy then. Get a development partner, fully understand their technology and then flush them away.
Two falling rocks will surely turn upwards by tying themselves together, right?
More of the same.
The usual stuff.
Nothing to see here. Until 2010 at least.
I don’t know if I agree with MDN. I use Google Docs on my iPhone quite regularly. It’s really nice to be able to make a quick edit to a spreadsheet (Documents can’t be edited yet on the iphone -WHY GOOGLE?!) and have it instantly update every version.
I love Google Docs and think it is the best Office Suite available for 90% of what I need. (for the other 10% I use Pages. Particularly when attention to page layout detail is needed. Not often for me.)
@ Amazin1:
Wow! So many words, so little meaning.
“News Flash: Microsoft is going to produce some software… in a year”.
So MS will take a year to create an IM client to run on the Symbian OS and then heaven knows how long to produce other bits of the mobile office suite.
You would think MS would at the very least have some alpha code to pull out of the bag with the press release. Talk about a non-event!
Care to take bets on how long it takes for MS to lose interest?
Good grief, Ballmer is the biggest idiot ever to run a company. What is this garbage? If MS’s board had any sense, they’d fire his fat, stupid ass.
But I guess the board is stupid too, so MS will continue ceasing to be relevant.
Even if they go after RIM, how does putting office mobile on a nokia accomplis this? Enterprises use blackberries for all the other features that help them protect themselves. And blackberry already has the ability to open, edit office files. I’m clients? How about pin messaging on a blackberry. Or blackberry messenger. This announcement is a joke. Microsoft already lost the smartphone race and nokia is losing mkt share to apple and rim. This certainly won’t help in any regard.
yeah, this is all well and good, but when you actually think about it… “wait, so Office is going to entice me to buy a Nokia smartphone…over a BB? And over an iPhone/iPod touch?”
Now that’s a leap of imagination…
But you can imagine the phone call, “Look guys, you need us and we need you… lets do this, or we’ll all be steamrolled by Apple…”
before you know it, they’ll be partnering with RIM to take on the iPhone
There’s a better take at Jim Goldman’s CNBC blog. He talks to a MS and a Nokia rep and here are a couple juicy tidbits:
And Microsoft’s Business Division President Stephen Elop tells me, “Set aside the operating system question, these are two companies that have natural synergies in the competitive environment…Will more things come out of that? Absolutely.”
LOL, “natural synergies”?!? Like they are both desperate enough that they’ll throw away their natural enmity and embrace one another, kind of like MS and Yahoo in search?
And one more tidbit about their thoughts on Palm’s Pre:
Separately, with so much attention lavished on Blackberry this, and Apple that, I did ask both these guys for their thoughts on the Palm Pre. They both looked at each other with quizzical faces, laughed, scoffed, and Elop saying, “Palm Pre? Whatever.” And again, laughter.
While Palm’s 205k in Pre sales last quarter may indeed be laughable, it shouldn’t be MS doing the laughing, cause they are next!
Apple should make a deal with OpenOffice and blow off the silly M$ pretentions!
M$ is dooooooooomed! Period!
Two Suckers don’t make a Player! They make a Hoover!
Microsoft and Nokia the 2 smart phone makers with the Fugliest UI’s and they are teaming up to make the World’s Fugliest and unusable UI in the Universe.
Two smart phone loser failures looking to each other for salvation, how cute. Ballmer bending over for Nokia and Nokia taking one up the Zune from Ballmer in the hopes of Zuning out a not so bad looser lump of Zune.
@Amazin1:
What it translates to is job security for the IT professional.