BlackBerry manufacturer RIM recently announced that they have purchased DataViz, the company responsible for the popular Documents To Go application available on multiple platforms. Documents To Go allows users to edit Microsoft Office documents on their chosen smartphone or PDA. The best part of apps like these is that full editing is allowed whilst retaining difficult formatting information such as conditional formatting in Excel or content tables in Word on a platform that doesn’t natively support Microsoft products.
The question now is will RIM continue to allow the release of Documents To Go on platforms outside of BlackBerry? The app is currently supported on iOS, Android, Maemo, PalmOS (but not WebOS for Pre) and Windows Mobile. All opposing platforms could now be viewed as direct competition; the software would continue to work but support dropped.
There are alternatives for users outside of BlackBerry that want a supported application for their mobile Office needs such as QuickOffice for iOS or Androffice for Android in partnership with Google Docs, so if RIM decide to drop support it wont spell the end of document editing for these users. There could be a bit of grumbling however if customers decide they want to start purchasing new applications
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