Microsoft and Nokia Alliance

MS Press Notes: Aug. 12, 2009
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/aug09/08-12PixiPR.mspx


These are the excerpts...

Microsoft and Nokia have formed a global alliance to design, develop and market mobile productivity, communications and collaboration solutions.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will begin collaborating immediately on the design, development and marketing of productivity solutions for the mobile professional, bringing Microsoft Office Mobile and Microsoft business communications, collaboration and device management software to Nokia’s Symbian devices. These solutions will be available for a broad range of Nokia smartphones starting with the company’s business optimized range, Nokia Eseries. The two companies will also market these solutions to businesses, carriers and individuals.

Both Microsoft and Nokia possess a rare combination of enterprise experience and consumer understanding and, in addition to the collaboration on existing software and services, will also use these assets to jointly design a range of new user experiences for future Nokia devices. These experiences will be identified together, and will be created by dedicated teams inside both companies to better meet the growing needs of the mobile professional.

This project builds on the existing relationship with Nokia who is optimizing access to email and other personal information with Exchange Activesync. Next year, Nokia intends to start shipping Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile on their smartphones, followed by other Office applications and related software and services in the future. These will include:
- The ability to view, edit, create and share Office documents on more devices in more places with mobile optimized versions of Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft OneNote
- Enterprise instant messaging and presence, and optimized conferencing and collaboration experience with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile
- Mobile access to intranet and extranet portals built on Microsoft SharePoint Server
- Enterprise device management with Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager.







So does this means software as a pure business. Can we developers expect collaboration tools and powerful development environment IDE for cross platform development from these two and will these be for free?

Waiting for the first release...