Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"If you want to edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on your Windows Mobile device, there is no substitute for SoftMaker Office. Only SoftMaker Office preserves all the formatting and content of your Microsoft Office files. Good news! SoftMaker Office has just become more affordable. From now until November 11, 2009, each of its applications is available for only US$ | € 9.99, and the full suite comes at a low US$ | € 24.95."

If you're looking for a powerful suite of software to work on Microsoft Office documents, it doesn't get much better than SoftMaker's Office suite. Normally quite expensive, the suite is available for $24.95 USD, or $9.99 for each separate app, until November 11th.

"Microsoft and Nokia, long adversaries in mobile phone technology, have agreed to a partnership to equip many Nokia cellphones with the Microsoft Office software, according to a person with knowledge of the agreement."

Just like licensing ActiveSync technology to Apple for the iPhone, it's not surprising to see the Office group at Microsoft reaching out to extend their technology to other platforms. Unfortunately this erodes an advantage that Windows Mobile has, but given how stagnant Windows Mobile has been over the past few years, you can't blame other groups at Microsoft for wanting to work with other platforms. Oh, and speaking of the iPhone, it looks like Microsoft might be reaching out there too. And in the meantime, Microsoft had to build their own Facebook app while Facebook built one for the iPhone. That tells you a lot about how the industry perceives Windows Mobile, even though Windows Mobile as a platform is still moving 16+ million units a year. Perception matters.

"After teasing the market multiple times, Microsoft Corp. plans to finally confirm today that it's bringing its most money-making desktop software franchise online and to smart phones. Microsoft will release lightweight versions of four components of its Microsoft Office suite for the Web and Windows Mobile smart phones, said Chris Capossela, senior vice president of Microsoft's business division, in an interview on Monday."

I was incredibly excited by this news until I stopped and started wondering - Is Microsoft going to build this to be compatible with all smartphones or are they going to go the usual Microsoft route and only make it compatible to Microsoft's horribly deficient mobile web browser? Either way, as a Windows Mobile user, this means we should have access to basic Microsoft Office elements online. Unfortunately it could mean that once again the rest of the Internet population would have to go without. Hopefully the latter is not the case. We'll keep you updated as we hear more news on this subject!