Microsoft Apps for Symbian will be available for Belle devices

Well, just when every thought that Symbian is dead and buried, Nokia came up with Belle, which radically changes the user experience of Symbian smartphones. But two days ago something else happened, something that made me rub my eyes a little. Nokia and Microsoft announced that Microsoft Apps will be available for Symbian Belle devices. The applications will be available in two stages. The first stage will come in Q4 or 2011 and will include Microsoft Lync 2010 Mobile, Microsoft PowerPoint Broadcast, Microsoft OneNote and Microsoft Document Connection. The second stage will come in 2012 with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint being some of them. This is kind of bad news for the QuickOffice team, since they will most likely lose a great deal of their Symbian customers. Even though Elop announced the death of Symbian, this bunch of much needed apps, seems to say otherwise. I honestly hope that sometime in the near future, Mr. Elop will get up on a stage and announce that they will continue developing and supporting Symbian. The Belle update and these Microsoft apps seem to confirm that Symbian still has a huge user base that just can't be ignored.