Quickoffice adds remote content access

Mobile office software company Quickoffice has announced a partnership that it says will see users gain remote content access and the ability to view, edit and share desktop content directly from a mobile device.

Quickoffice's deal with remote-access company SoonR means that Quickoffice users will be able to automatically gain access to files and folders that have been synchronised to SoonR's servers from their PCs, via a service to be called "Quickaccess".

Using Quickoffice's scalable vector graphics (SVG) technology for compression and rendering, users will be able to edit then automatically backup documents to the SoonR servers from high-end Symbian smartphones.

The Quickoffice suite ships on almost all Series 60 and UIQ smartphones, including those produced by Nokia, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson, and currently provides users with a way of viewing and editing Office documents. Quickaccess is due to appear in the first quarter of 2008 via an over-the-air update.

Another notable functionality, due by the end of this year, includes Quickoffice support for Office 2007's .xml format. Asked whether Quickoffice would at any point support OpenOffice's .odf format, a rival to .xml, the company's vice president of product management, Paul Moreton, claimed there "has not been a whole lot of demand" because, he suggested, most OpenOffice users saved their documents in a Microsoft format anyway.