Nokia's Symbian Bell phones get boost with MS Apps

Microsoft's business productivity apps will soon arrive on selected Nokia phones running the Symbian Bell platform.

Microsoft's business productivity apps will soon arrive on selected Nokia phones running the Symbian Bell platform.

The mobile collaboration will mark the first time Microsoft has enabled its Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications to run natively outside the Windows platform.

The productivity tools will be available as a free update called Microsoft Apps and will initially include note taking app OneNote, IM communication service Lync, group document sharing service Document Connection, and mobile PowerPoint viewer PowerPoint Broadcast.

A subsequent update, due to be rolled out in the first half of 2012, will include native Word, Excel and PowerPoint mobile apps too said Nokia.

'If you use your Nokia smartphone for work as well as leisure these apps will transform even the stylish, mass market smartphones we recently launched into a mobile office,' said Nokia while emphasizing that it had not abandoned the Symbian platform in the rush to manufacture Nokia phones running Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system.

'There will be more updates in 2012 and more devices to come and Nokia has already said, we will provide software support to Symbian until at least 2016,' insisted Nokia. 'Symbian is hugely important to our future ambitions and this latest announcement is just another example of the role that Symbian will play…'

The software update will be available from late 4Q 2011 on the Nokia N8, Nokia C7, Nokia C6-01, Nokia E7, Nokia E6, Nokia X7, Nokia 700, Nokia 701, Nokia 600 and Nokia Oro.

Symbian-centric blog All About Symbian provides screenshots of the Microsoft Apps and a detailed description of their functionality.