Microsoft to push mobile office suite cross platform

.
Sometimes, when a company wants people to know it has something big up its sleeve, the best and most subtle way to announce it is via job posting, and a recent Microsoft listing leads us to believe the software giant is mulling cross platform pastures for its Office Mobile 2010 suite.
In a job listing entitled “Software Development Engineer – Office Mobile Job,” Microsoft outlined the barebones of its plan:
“In addition to the current Windows Mobile 6.5 and upcoming WM7 clients, with the recently announced alliance between Microsoft and Nokia we are working to bring Office Mobile to hundreds of millions of Nokia smartphone owners, followed by other leading Smartphone platforms.”
The listing goes on to say:
“This unique position involves technical challenges of working across multiple operating systems and devices as well as the chance to work with teams across the company and around the world.”
It’s unknown which platforms or operating systems these might be, but it’s widely believed the iPhone will top Microsoft’s lists, especially seeing how many iPhone apps the firm already has already in Apple’s AppStore. That doesn’t mean RIM’s Blackberry or Google’s Android can be discounted, of course.
While all this may not sound like a big deal, it’s worth remembering that the Redmond giant had previously made a rather large fuss about Office 2010 playing a significant role in the upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform, a platform which many feel has failed to create enough of a buzz so soon before launch.
Keeping the Office 2010 mobile suite for its Windows Phone 7 platform exclusively may have given the software giant a bit more leverage in offloading its OS, but it seems Microsoft is opting for more of a PC strategy here, pushing its software out to as many different mobile devices as possible.
Will the strategy pay off? That remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the job listing appears to have already been filled, so we could be seeing some developments on this front very soon indeed.