Microsoft rolls out Hotmail for the Kindle Fire

By | January 25, 2012, 7:52am PST

Summary: Microsoft has tweaked its Hotmail for Android implementation to create one that is customized 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.

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Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

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Mary-Jo Foley

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.

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Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

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