AT&T Tech Support 360Microsoft pokes at iPhone developer kit
Ever since the release of the iPhone developer kit, software companies everywhere have been trying to figure out just what they might be able to bring to the device.
The list of interested parties includes Microsoft.
"It's really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone," Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Specialized Devices and Applications Group, said in an interview with Fortune. "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."
Asked for further comment, a representative for Microsoft's Mac business unit told News.com the company is "excited to see improved and updated products and services for its customers" but had nothing to announce as far as its roadmap.
Microsoft clearly has some priorities to juggle here. The company would most like to compete with the iPhone with its Windows Mobile smartphones (as well as its recent Danger acquisition). But other of the company's initiatives, including Windows Live and Office, would benefit from being ubiquitously available.
The software maker has already said it would like to find a way to get its Silverlight onto the iPhone, and, of course Apple has licensed Microsoft's ActiveSync technology to bring Exchange connectivity to the iPhone.
Here's an interesting question--Would Microsoft want to charge for a version of Office for the iPhone? It could provide some added revenue to the unit, but Microsoft would be forced to hand over 30 percent of the proceeds to its rival.
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I don;t see MSFT giving up WM anytime soon (they should, but...) OTOH, I can see them doing their level best to reverse-engineer the unholy crap out of the iPhone SDK to see what they can incorporate.
/P
Apple is keeping flash off of the iPhone to increase web
standards compliance, there's no chance in hell that they'd let
some proprietary start up format on it.
As for Office products, if people want to be able to access key
documents for presentation, reference, and text editing, Apple's
got their whole line of IMHO superior apps they could port
directly to work well with this OS X environment.
I see this on par with Java and flash. The creators are saying
they're developing towards the iPhone, but SDK agreements
prohibit their deployment on this platform.
Once again, M$ trying to look like it's covering its bases. This is
all mildly ironic/hilarious seeing how Balmer wrote off the
iPhone as insignificant.