Microsoft Office opening for iPhone

As reported in: The Register

iPhone users will soon be able to view, edit, and share Microsoft Word and Excel files on their Jesus Phones.

Announced at this week's CTIA Wireless 2009 tradeshow and conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Quickoffice for iPhone promises a broad range of editing and file-management features.

Since at least last October, Dataviz has promised a similar app for the iPhone as part of its Documents to Go line for other handhelds, but it's not yet ready for release, and DataViz didn't immediately answer our query as to when it would appear.

Long-time Mac developer Mariner Software offers an Excel-on-iPhone app, the $9.99 Mariner Calc (iTunes link), but not a Word-editing app.

Quickoffice for free iPhone's Word-document editing capabilities will include font formatting, text selection, bulleting, and cut, copy, and paste within Word documents. Excel-spreadsheet features will include math and stat functions, cell editing, the ability to recalculate entries, and to insert and resize rows and columns.

Quickoffice for iPhone's developer - unsurprisingly named Quickoffice - also publishes a range of productivity apps for Symbian, Android, Blackberry, and Palm devices.

Two of the apps in the Quickoffice for iPhone suite, the $12.99 Quicksheet and $3.99 Quickoffice Files (iTunes links), are already available, and will be joined by Quickword to complete the suite.

Quickoffice said that the suite will be available at an "introductory price" of $19.99. A company spokesperson told The Reg to expect it next week.

After we receive our copy of Quickoffice for iPhone, we'll put it through its paces and let you know if it's worth your twenty bucks.