LOS ANGELES, USA - Microsoft earlier forged a partnership with Nokia, promising the release of the mobile version of its office suite Microsoft Office, and has recently released a public beta of its next-generation Office 2010 Mobile at the Professional Developers Conference, held on November 17-19th.

The Redmond software giant has been at the forefront of mobile platforms ever since the release of its first mobile OS Pocket PC 2000, which was followed by a series of updates, to the latest version being Windows Mobile 6.5, also known as Windows Phone. The company's mobile office suite, which also debuted alongside Pocket PC in 2000 as Pocket Office, has now grown on to Office 6.1, and the latest version Office Mobile 2010 is in the latest stages of development, keeping the Windows Mobile 6.5 OS into perspective.

While there are a number of improvements over the previous versions of mobile office suites, Office 2010 brings some of the most sought-after features to mobile platforms. Leading the list is the synchronisation of multi-touch gesture-based controls of Windows Mobile 6.5 within Office Suite. This brings the pinch-type zoom-in and flick for navigation between images, features which have so far been the top selling points of the iPhone. While copy-paste functions have been the best selling features of the PC version of this software, Office 2010 Mobile adds copy-paste across applications making it easier to edit data within emails and office documents.

As Outlook is the most popular email client among business users, the mobile version has been one of the most sought-after applications on mobile devices. With Outlook Mobile 2010, Microsoft has introduced a conversation view for messages, making following up on email conversations very intuitive. Further, the new text reflow technology incorporated in this version of Office promises desktop-like reading experience with editing capabilities even for tables and charts.

While there are several Office suites for mobile platforms in the market today, Office 2010 Mobile looks to be setting high standards for this genre of applications. With Windows Mobile 6.5 getting positive feedback from critics and users alike, Office 2010 Mobile may turn the tide towards Microsoft in the mobile segment. The beta version does look promising, so the final version is expected to pack in further improvements over the earlier versions of this program.