Following iPad release, Google rolls out free Android and iPhone versions of Quickoffice for Apps customers

Google on Wednesday announced the release of Quickoffice for Android and iPhone, available gratis for all its Apps for Business customers. If you fit the bill, you can download the apps now for free from Apple’s App Store and Google Play.

Google’s Quickoffice is meant for business users that have to share files and collaborate with users who don’t yet use Google Docs. “From Word to Excel to Powerpoint, you can make quick edits at the airport or from the back of a taxi and save and share everything in Google Drive,” Google boasts.

Google has said before that these free apps are part of its plan to make converting Office files to Google documents, or making quick edits without converting, easy on any mobile device. They let you open and edit any Office files you’ve stored in Google Drive while you’re on the go. Furthermore, you can now find and use your Drive files from within the Quickoffice app (just sign in with your Google Apps for Business account and your Drive folders view will include Shared With Me, Starred, Recent, and any subfolders).

Google acquired QuickOffice back in June 2012. At the time, QuickOffice offered native apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Symbian. We can rule out Symbian, but it makes sense for the company to support both Android and iOS. Windows Phone and BlackBerry users, meanwhile, are likely out of luck.

If you’re not familiar with it, here’s Quickoffice for iPhone:

Meanwhile, here’s Quickoffice for Android (looks like it works on both tablets and phones):

In December 2012, Google stopped offering Google Apps for free; the premium version still costs $50 per user, per year. Two weeks later, the company released Quickoffice for iPad, making it exclusively available for its Apps customers.

As we wrote then, we don’t think this is a coincidence. The company has been improving Google Docs with QuickOffice’s technology ever since the acquisition, but the timing of these apps makes a lot of sense. These “free” apps make Google Apps for Business more attractive to organizations.

At the time of writing, the Android app doesn’t have appear to have a changelog. This may be a blip or may simply be due to the fact it’s being rereleased for Apps customers. In either case, here’s the feature list:

• Create, Edit & View Word documents (.docx).
• Create, Edit & View Excel® spreadsheets (.xlsx).
• Create, Edit & View PowerPoint® presentations (.pptx).
• Edit & View older versions of Word, Excel®, PowerPoint® (.doc, .xls, & .ppt).
• Spell Check in documents (.doc & .docx).

Here’s the full Quickoffice 6.0.1 for iOS changelog:

• Now designed for both iPhone and iPad.
• Sort Google Drive files by Shared with me, Starred, and Recent.
• Support for multiple Google Drive accounts.
• Improved chart rendering in Quicksheet and Quickpoint.
• Create and share ZIP folders from multiple files.
• Bug fixes and performance enhancements.

We’ll be watching closely to see if Quickoffice ever gets ported to Windows Phone. We won’t be holding our breath though, given that the two are constantly at each other’s necks. Still, rumors of Microsoft releasing Office for Android and iOS keep surfacing, month after month.

Top Image credit: beermug