Microsoft Brings Outlook to iPhone, Other Mobile Devices

Microsoft's new mobile display for Outlook email.Credit

SEATTLE — It’s easy to overlook the following of a product like Outlook, Microsoft’s email program, if you haven’t spent any time working in a large company.

Sure, Gmail has its converts, and many millennials shun email entirely for iMessage, Snapchat and other alternatives. But the world still has plenty of power email users and, for them, Outlook is as comforting and familiar as a pair of fleece pajamas.

This is why Microsoft’s release on Thursday of the first real Outlook for mobile devices, including iPads, iPhones and their Android variants, is a milestone. For Microsoft, it underscores how far the company has come from the days when it tried to use its Office suite of applications, of which Outlook is a member, to hurt Apple and Google Android devices by not making the software available on them.

Eventually, the company figured out it was only hurting Office’s profile among mobile users by doing this, and finally made amends by releasing iPhone, iPad and Android versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint last year.

On Thursday, Microsoft will announce that there have been 80 million downloads total of Office applications for iPhone and iPad since March of last year and 250,000 downloads of its Office Android apps.

In a phone interview, Julia White, general manager of the Office product management team, said iOS and Android versions of Outlook were among her group’s most frequently requested products.

Microsoft has had crude iOS and Android versions of its email program available for some time. The app, called OWA for Outlook Web Access, is in fact little more than a gussied-up Web site made to look like an app. It lacks the performance and features of a native email app.

Now, finally Outlook is a real mobile app. The product is based on the code of an email start-up, Accompli, that Microsoft acquired in early December. Although it isn’t clear yet how much Microsoft has changed Accompli’s product, the fact that Microsoft is releasing an Outlook app based on the software barely two months later is a sign of how quickly the pace has picked up at Microsoft. Satya Nadella, the company’s new chief executive, has made speed a priority at the company.

People can download the Outlook mobile app free. Microsoft is aiming to get users, especially business customers, to upgrade to Office 365, a subscription service.

For some professionals, the arrival of Outlook on tablets and mobile phones will give them one less reason to use a traditional computer running Windows. That’s not great for Microsoft, but at least they’ll be using Office.