While the mobile apps industry has been a hot topic for the last couple of years, many of the most successful companies in the industry have been active for a longer time, learning their tricks in a world where smartphone penetration was limited and the app store had still to establish itself as a viable channel to consumers. One such company is Quickoffice, which rather than competing in the crowded consumer market, focuses on the more lucrative business sector. While the company has a significant heritage when compared to many of its rivals, it also now finds itself working at the intersection of two of the biggest technology drivers of the day: tablet devices and cloud services.

According to Alan Masarek (pictured), the company’s CEO, its model is primarily to get its apps embedded into devices by manufacturers, and then up-sell to end users, who are primarily in the prosumer, SMB or enterprise categories. The company’s success was built on its strength in Symbian OS, where its deep embedding into the platform meant it was included on all of the S60 devices shipped – giving it an extraordinary reach both in terms of device shipments and geographic markets served. Due to its close relationships with OEMs, it has also achieved significant reach among the Android user base, although this is obviously not an approach it has been able to take with iOS, where the Quickoffice suite is available through the App Store.

“When we did our deal back in 2005 with Nokia, with the Symbian platform, that pre-dated the existence of any of these vertical aftermarket channels like Apple’s App Store, BlackBerry App World, or Android Market. Back then, mobile application developers struggled in terms of how to get distribution  – how do I get somebody in South America, versus somebody in North America, or Western Europe or Japan, to know about me, to come and buy my application? It’s incredibly difficult for a small company to build that brand awareness. So we chose to actually embed into the platform, that was our strategy, so that we have a Quickoffice branded application in the device that ships out of the factory. And that proved to be very successful for use, because wherever that phone went, we went,” Masarek said.

While the industry has evolved to see the App Store become a recognised channel to consumers, Masarek believes that the embedded model still has a lot to offer – for those companies lucky enough to achieve it. “You now have a wide pipe to get to the user, but I believe that embedding with the OEMs is critical, because you’ve got 300,000 brethren apps on the App Store. How do you rise above the din, and make yourself known?”

Multi-platform support
Quickoffice currently supports a range of platforms, including Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Palm, and Symbian, and the company is also working with HP/Palm’s webOS – in October 2010, it announced that Quickoffice would be embedded in devices powered by webOS 2.0. The decision as to which platforms to support and when is not a simple one, according to Masarek.

“It is something that we discuss internally, with tremendous intensity. And actually, I would say we have made very good decisions. And thank goodness. We made the decision to support Android over two years ago, it was August of 2008. No-one knew Android was going to be what it has already developed to be, and what it continues to track to be.”

“We made the decision on iPhone fairly early; I can’t remember the exact date. We weren’t a launch partner on iPhone, but we came out fairly soon after the original device. iPad, we were on iPad within a month or two maybe of the release. Making the decisions to support Android and Apple were key, and it is the exact same thing on webOS. Now that HP has acquired Palm, and looks to make a major bet on webOS, that decision in hindsight looks to be the correct one,” he continues.

“We support certain products with a C++ code base, and other products with a Java code base. So Android and BlackBerry are Java; iOS, Symbian, Palm are C++. So you would not use the Android Java code base to chase after the Apple iPad. But it’s a very substantial effort in order to write a new platform’s UI. You go from let’s say keypad to touch: there is a lot of work to do.”

The silver lining
In February 2010, Quickoffice announced Quickoffice Connect, enabling customers to access documents stored in the cloud from their mobile devices, and integrating with services including Box.net, Dropbox, Apple MobileMe and Google Docs. “Enterprises are increasingly, and at an accelerating rate, moving to cloud-based services and cloud based repositories. And given that you’ve got cloud-based content, you have to have mobile access to that content. So these become complete bed-fellows in terms of the development of mobile. Smartphones extending to tablets, and the cloud, are all linked arm-in-arm.”

The big issue here is preserving data integrity, when converting documents that may have been viewed and edited on PCs, tablets and smartphones, and saved multiple times by different devices. “The thing that makes it difficult is that we need to do a round-trip, with 100 percent data integrity,” Masarek says.

This is coupled with the familiar constraints of a mobile device, but now accompanied by the need to replicate features delivered by Microsoft Office on the desktop. “You’ve got memory and processing power constrained devices, with a small form factor both in terms of screen display and keyboard. So you’re taking the desktop Microsoft Office, which is a mammoth programme, and you’re trying to create a suitable experience in a small form factor, with those limitations in terms of memory and processor. That’s challenging. And then you couple those challenges with the fact that you’ve got a fragmented OS environment, and it’s difficult – which is why there’s not a lot of people doing it.”

A tablet future
Masarek is also clear where the opportunities lie for Quickoffice: “Tablets. All it takes is one word.” In many ways, these products seem a perfect fit for Quickoffice, marrying a mobile OS with a form factor more suited to viewing and editing documents. “The smartphone market is fabulous for us. The smartphone market is growing 50 percent a year, and the functionality of these devices are making them ever more suitable for office productivity types of applications like ours. Tablets take what is terrific about smartphones, and just puts it in afterburner mode for us. Because our product on a tablet is a complete have-to-have,” he said.

“What is fascinating about it is that I think no-one would be honest if they said that they foresaw the massive, explosive growth that is happening in tablets. And it’s been just a matter of months. But with the number of projects coming out with the Android and webOS platforms, and everybody chasing after iPad, it’s clear that the tablet category is going to be fabulous.”

Masarek suggests that the main impact the tablet will have on the market is “to effectively turn the laptop into a desktop,” as workers embrace the additional portability of the new form factor. “In my own personal use experience, I used to always put my laptop in my bag every night when I left the office, and take it home. And most nights, it stayed in my bag. But I always took it home because I had a lot of work to do. Now I leave my laptop at work: in effect, my laptop has become the desktop, because I can do what I need to do on my iPad. That’s because of Quickoffice’s software,” he concluded.

 

Steve Costello