GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Alternate MS Office icons by talwayseb, via CrystalXP.net

Microsoft is a giant company working in many different fields, but in the consumer market, apart from XBox, it does one thing really well: software. After some high-profile, quickly-aborted misadventures in mobile, that’s what it’s going to focus on from now on.

Microsoft’s Tivanka Ellawala told the WSJ that the company’s done with smartphone hardware (beyond in-house prototypes, presumably): We are in the software business and that is where our business will be focused,” he said. That means no follow-ups to the Kin social media smartphone, definitely; no resuscitation of the Courier e-reader/tablet project, probably; and a new focus on making apps for other platforms, quite possibly.

What kinds of platforms? I don’t know — how about the iPad?

On Wednesday, Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott confirmed the rumors on Twitter: “Shhh…. It’s true: Microsoft is working on iPad apps.” Makes perfect sense to me:

• Microsoft was never fully behind smartphone/tablet hardware;
• Its mobile OS is battling stiff competition on all sides;
• They’ve always been a multi-platform company;
• And, um, they’ve already got apps on the iPhone. (Bing. For now.)

So besides search, what are we talking about here? Microsoft Office? (Which, remember, includes a LOT of apps, not just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.) Games? Messenger? Frontend clients for Windows Live? Specialized applications for enterprise clients? Virtual PC, to mix it up with VMWare’s anticipated virtualization apps? No one knows.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Windows Phone 7 Office Image via Microsoft.

Traditionally, Microsoft has been a software company, leveraging its office suites and operating systems, but selling applications for any compatible hardware and platform. For smartphones in particular, its strategy has been to supply the software and let other companies worry about developing the phones. So why not go all the way and sell its software for every device on every platform?

That’s what Business Insider’s Dan Frommer proposes the company do: “Microsoft should develop Office apps for the iPad, Android, Chrome OS, BlackBerry tablet, and any other computing platform that is likely to become popular over the next 5-10 years,” adding that “if Microsoft wants to keep people tied into its Office suite, it needs to go where the people are going.”

Office is integrated into the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 OS, but would compete on several fronts in smartphone and tablet platforms, including iWork on Apple’s iPad, Google Docs on the mobile web, and Dataviz’s multi-platform Documents To Go, just acquired by Blackberry maker RIM.

Frommer sees RIM’s purchase of Documents To Go as a defense against the possibility of Microsoft introducing an Office app for Blackberry. Ironically, if RIM stops active development of Documents To Go for other platforms, that could create just the multi-platform opening needed to entice Microsoft to swoop in.

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews