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Microsoft, Nokia Team To Add Mobile Office Apps To Phones
CWmike writes "On the same day a court banned sales of Microsoft Office for PCs, Microsoft and Nokia said they are working together to put Microsoft Office on Nokia handsets. It's a move that should give Microsoft leverage against Google and others that are attacking its Office business with free or low-priced Web apps. The aim of the deal is to bring an application called Microsoft Office Mobile to Nokia's Symbian devices, they said. They will also do the same for other Microsoft communications, collaboration and device-management software. The applications will be available first on Nokia's E-series phones, but eventually will extend to other Nokia handsets. The Microsoft-Nokia deal brings two competitors together, but could spell the end of Windows Mobile. Gartner analyst Nick Jones said he is becoming 'more concerned' about the future for Windows Mobile and added in a blog today that Windows Mobile 7 could be Microsoft's last update of the product."
According to this Link, the claim is that they want to battle Balckberry's RIM.
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Uh? Who in their right mind would even want to use office on a mobile phone? The UI is bad as it is on a full-size PC.
"Here is your travel itinerary in Microsoft Word format."
"Here is the almost-final proposal; could you please have a look and mark (with a "*") any items that we need to discuss?"
"Let me give you a 1-minute run through our presentation; I have the slides on my phone."
If voice recognition worked...
Or handwriting recognition.
Yeah, I know, I know, tablet PCs (or whatever the latest buzzword for them is) have been the Next Big Thing for twenty years now. But sooner or later we will have handheld phones/computers (whatever buzzword they're calling them at that point) which will be able to translate regular handwriting into text as reliably as typing the same text on a keyboard. Faster than dictation, and a hell of a lot more private. Doing this on a device the size of most of the common smartphones would be quite comfortable, I think.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
This is a news story about bringing Microsoft Office to business Symbian smartphones made by Nokia. Most of the E-Series referenced in the story have keyboards and look like Blackberries.
This is not about your average T9 cellphone.
Can you just give it to me as plaintext instead?
Nope. I send all important email messages as blank body with a Word attachment! If I can't be bothered to copy and paste do you think I'm going covert something to plaintext just for you? I don't even know how to do that and don't have time to learn. Much too busy. Much much too busy.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
Wow, you're actually defending this by trying to say hooking up your cell phone to a TV is a viable solution? So if you are near a TV, and have the requisite cables... you can then output your Office files and still have a tiny keyboard. Brilliant! Or not.
What could be so pressing that you have no laptop, or access to a computer, yet you have a cell phone, proprietary AV cables, and a TV. This is some alternate reality isn't it?
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Citation needed.
The standard office file formats (i.e. doc, xls, etc) were the same from Office 97 to Office 2003. The Office 2007 file formats (docx, xlsx, etc) are readable and writable by Office 2000 or later. Contrast this with a company like Autodesk, where the file formats change every three years (in a thinly disguised attempt to sell upgrades) and I find it hard to agree with the statement you make above.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
That's a whole truck load of BS you just posted there my friend.
For many years, Microsoft has had the nasty habit of breaking their own software and data formats to force customers to upgrade.
If anything, MS bends over backwards to maintain backwards compatibility. Vista was their first OS in which you couldn't run DOS apps (at least w/o third party s/w). Office 2k7 is completely able to consume/publish in Office 2k3 formats. Office 2k3 is completely able to consume/publish in Office 2k7 formats. 64-bit Vista and 64-bit Win7 can still run your 32-bit Windows apps. Office 2k3, Office 2k7, Vista, Win2k3, WS08, XP etc. are all still supported (some are past their 5-year mainstream support lifecycles but are in extended support). What the hell are you talking about???
This was happening on a large scale with XP, mostly because Vista required a hardware upgrade, and because the 'upgrade' cycle happening during a time of budget tightening.
Prove it. You're running your mouth off in a public forum so be prepared to back your claims up. Large scale? Because of a hardware upgrade? Time of budget tightening? And MS considered all the factors when designing for Vista? References please!!
Really, Microsoft has been cannibalizing their own business for profits.
Nothing insightful there -- when you own 90+% of the market, you are your own biggest competitor. But cannibalizing? Please explain? They were eating their own sales to get more of their own sales? That doesn't even make sense!
they have been resorting to forcing upgrades
How did they force people to upgrade? References? Sources? Anything? Did they hold a gun to someone's head? Did they prematurely curtail the mainstream support of some product? Did they decide to forego an extended support lifecycle of some product? What on god's green earth are you talking about??
The end of Microsoft will be good for software development and for consumers.
There's absolutely no proof / logic by which you can make that claim definitively. No matter what you say, there will be counter-arguments that can be made. So understand that your view is simply colored by your MS hatred.
Microsoft has been a tax on computing and a hindrance to innovation.
This is slashdot, so I guess you'll get modded +5 Insightful for this kind of unsubstantiated drivel..
Windows 7 should be the end.
???
You should be the one to decide that right?...
Just because you hate MS for some irrational reasons, doesn't mean they will stop trying their best. If you dislike Windows, you have other options that you can exercise. But pretending that Windows is somehow broken or a dying product is, well, typical slashdot trolling.
The standard office file formats (i.e. doc, xls, etc) were the same from Office 97 to Office 2003.
No they were not. I still remember how Office 97 could not read all files created by Office 2003.
So what you need is a document viewer, not an office app.
Wow, big deal. Last I checked (i.e. yesterday), the iPhone had that ability built-in, and from what I've heard, about every other smartphone does as well.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No, they are not. I can send you hundreds of Office XP .ppt and .doc files that cannot be rendered properly by Office 2003 and Office 2007. .doc (not .docx, but .doc saved in 2003 compatibility mode) files that can't be read by Office 2003. I have lots of .doc files from Office 2000 that can't be rendered by Office 2003 and 2007. It is hard evidence. It is true.
I can send you Office 2007
This may be not intentional, but Microsoft's own formats are steaming pile of shit, and they can't read them themselves even with new software. This is why we need to scrap them all and opt for compact ODF format, not 6000 pages OOXML and alike specifications.