Google's Android Gets Office Viewers

Microsoft Office maybe coming to an Android phone near you.

Quickoffice, which specializes in mobile applications, has announced it will deliver Office views for Google's open source-based smartphone sometime this week. The company is now working on a PowerPoint viewer, which is scheduled for release before the end of March.

With the new product users will be able to view Word and Excel files in Microsoft's Office 2003 format.

The new suite, which Quickoffice officials said they worked "very closely" with Google on, doesn't allow users to edit Word and Excel files. However, Eric Farlander, marketing director for Quickoffice, said the company is now working on Android-based editors for both Word and Excel. He declined to say, however, when those editors might be available.

The Quickoffice suite gives users the ability to view Office files natively, which gives them more "in-depth viewing," according to Farlander, meaning they can do things such as resize Excel columns and see formulas in cells.

The Quickoffice suite also includes a file manager, something that wasn't available with the first Google phone, the T-Mobile G1. That device offered users the ability to view Word and Excel in HTML format.

Perhaps bowing to the popularity of Apple's iPhone, Quickoffice has already delivered an editor for Excel 2003 along with viewers for Word and Excel. It also has available viewers and editors for the Symbian platform.

On the Apple iPhone, Quickoffice currently offers Excel 2003 editing and Word and Excel 2007 viewing. For Symbian, it provides viewing and editing for Word and Excel 2007 files.

The suite, which is expected to sell for $7.99, will be available through Google's Android Market when that site makes its debut, reportedly this week.

Earlier this week it was announced that developers are now allowed to include pricing when uploading mobile applications to Google's Android Market, which is positioned to compete against the iPhone App Store.