As a young company seeking venture capital financing, I remember journeying to Sand Hill Road during our formative years. While it seems a lifetime ago, in reality, it was only five years ago. But oops, in this business, five years is a lifetime! My VC pitches went something like the following: “Smartphones are going to become the fastest growing segment of the mobile device market and will deliver productivity utility as a core part of people’s daily workflow. People will use their smartphones like palm-sized mobile computers and they’ll need to be able to view and edit their personal content and files on these devices…and Quickoffice’s mobile office functionality will be the core utility by which people do this.” The all too frequent response? “Why would anyone edit or create a file on a small screen, small keyboard device?” Well, as the old ad used to say, “We’ve come a long way baby.”
 
Smartphones are, in fact, the fastest growing segment in mobile, and are unquestionably an integral part of mobile productivity. Using our smartphones, we surf the Web, manage our contacts and calendars, text, email, and view and edit our personal content and files. Simply stated, the marriage of smartphones and productivity is undeniable.

So, what’s next? The “what’s next” is something we refer to as the “Connected” mobile office. In the past, mobile office applications were used primarily to view and edit email attachments, or files that you preloaded to your device. I maintain that this “old paradigm” isn’t nearly good enough. You must have access to your files and content anywhere and anytime. You cannot be limited to just email attachments someone else sent you or personal content you somehow remembered to preload. This means you must have an office suite that is “Connected,” thereby providing you with anywhere, anytime access to your personal and corporate files and content wherever it’s stored, be it your desktop or in the cloud.

At Quickoffice, we recently introduced the Quickoffice Connect™ Mobile Suite. It’s the world’s first mobile office solution that combines access to a multitude of cloud storage services, like Google Docs, Box.net, Dropbox and Apple MobileMe, with client-based viewing and editing of Microsoft Office™ file formats. Early indications are extremely promising as the iPhone version is a top ranked product worldwide in the App Store’s Business category, and we’ll be releasing cross-platform versions of this product shortly!

We believe that a connected mobile office sets a new standard and yet again demonstrates that the smartphone is the integral device for mobile productivity.