Microsoft rolls out Hotmail for the Kindle Fire

Continuing its cross-platform roll from last year, the Hotmail team made available for download this week a version of Microsoft's free Hotmail Web-based e-mail for the Kindle Fire.

From a January 24 post on the Inside Windows Live blog:

"The Hotmail Kindle app gives you several advantages over the native Kindle Fire mail application. Whereas the native Kindle application simply downloads your mail via POP3, with the new Hotmail app you can sync all your mail, contacts, folders, and subfolders via the more robust Exchange Active Sync protocol."

According to Microsoft, the company had to make updates to its existing Hotmail app for Android to get it to work on the Kindle Fire because the Fire uses a different implementation of Android.

Last year, various teams in Redmond rolled out a number of Microsoft apps for non-Microsoft mobile platforms, including an updated version of OneNote for the iPhone; a new release of OneNote for the iPad; a SkyDrive cloud-storage app for iPhone; a Lync client for Android; a Lync client for iPhone; and Hotmail for Android.

Company officials have said that in 2012, more Microsoft productivity wares to come to various mobile platforms, including Android. There's still no official word as to when and if Office will be available on the iPad, however.