Google announced Tuesday morning that it has acquired Quickoffice, a suite of mobile apps for iOS and Android focused on office-related productivity. The deal gives Google an established document viewing and editing platform at a critical competitive juncture.
Microsoft appears reluctant to extend its productivity powerhouse Office to other mobile platforms before it can cut the software’s teeth in its own Windows 8 ecosystem. Google may be looking to take advantage of Microsoft’s hesitance, filling in the office hole in Android and iOS with its own productivity suite before Microsoft can pounce.
In a press release, Google said the Quickoffice team would help it achieve success with Google Apps on mobile platforms:
Today, consumers, businesses and schools use Google Apps to get stuff done from anywhere, with anyone and on any device. Quickoffice has an established track record of enabling seamless interoperability with popular file formats, and we’ll be working on bringing their powerful technology to our Apps product suite.
Quickoffice has mobile file-sharing apps that allow users to create, edit and view Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents on their phones. Quickoffice has apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android, as well as webOS and Symbian operating systems.
Quickoffice announced their acquisition by Google in a press release today:
When we embarked on our mission to become the world leader in office productivity, we knew we were taking on a huge challenge. We worked very hard to build Quickoffice as a user friendly, seamless and yet powerful way to view, edit, sync and share documents anywhere, anytime. It’s been a very humbling experience to see this vision embraced by our users. Now, we are ushering in a new chapter with Google. By combining the magic of Google’s intuitive solutions with Quickoffice’s powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow.
Quickoffice struck deals to have its apps pre-loaded on Android phones and tablets, and recently saw a jump in users corresponding to sales of the Kindle Fire, GigaOm’s Ryan Kim reported last year. The company reports that its product has been downloaded on 300 million devices so far in 180 countries.
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