Word and Excel on your iPhone? Possibly.
Apple's iPhone, love it or hate it, has proven more popular than expected with business users. What originally seemed to be a cool handset for your average consumer, has via software updates and feature additions become a largely usable enterprise handset.
Microsoft as you'd expect, has taken note. With its Windows Mobile operating system already running on a fair percentage of smartphone handsets, the software giant is now looking to tap into the iPhone market by developing native iPhone applications.
Tom Gibbons, head of Microsoft's specialised devices and applications group confirmed to CNN's Fortune that Microsoft has been spending time with Apple's iPhone SDK and has found the platform to be largely suitable for the development of applications such as those found in Microsoft's Office suite.
Microsoft, who already develops Office for Apple's Mac computers, isn't alien to the idea of deploying applications on devices manufactured by one of its main rivals. "We do have experience with that environment, and that gives us confidence to be able to do something," says Gibbons.
"It's really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone. To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we're actually in the process of trying to understand that now," he adds.
The idea of Microsoft on your iPhone may sound a little weird, and indeed scary to die-hard Apple fans, but it does make a whole lot of sense. There's a large audience out there and Microsoft was never going to let it pass by.
Apple's iPhone SDK was only made available earlier this month so we aren't expecting Office 2008 iPhone Edition to appear overnight. In the future however, don't be surprised to find various Microsoft software finding a home on your iPhone device.
