Microsoft Release SkyDrive for iPhone and Windows Phone

Today Microsoft released SkyDrive for both the iPhone and Windows Phone.

Here is what they said:

SkyDrive is your personal cloud for your documents, notes, photos and videos. Move your files into SkyDrive and immediately they’re available from any web browser anywhere in the world. As we detailed a few days ago, there have been a number of recent updates to SkyDrive.com to improve how you share with others, manage your files and folders, and browse through your stuff blazingly fast utilizing the latest web technologies (like HTML5 and CSS3).

Yet as devices proliferate, having a great experience on the web is only one piece of a pretty complex puzzle. As people start to rely more on their smartphones, the need to be able to access files on-the-go is important. As we mentioned two weeks ago, we view device access as “table stakes” for personal cloud storage. People are choosing where to put their files based on how portable and accessible they are across the various devices they use; therefore, it’s critical that we continue to extend the SkyDrive experience to the devices you use every day.

SkyDrive for Windows Phone

With the recent release of Windows Phone 7.5 (“Mango”), we focused on deeply integrating SkyDrive into the phone itself through the Pictures and Office hubs. For instance, you can share photos stored on SkyDrive by email, text, or IM, use Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with SkyDrive files, and even keep your phone’s camera roll up-to-date on SkyDrive automatically. This integration isn’t surface-level—SkyDrive is integrated into the apps you use, along with core phone functions. This is a great example of using SkyDrive as an App cloud for Office and Pictures, where the cloud is an underlying feature of the app itself. For more info on the differences between a File cloud, a Device cloud, and an App cloud, check out our post SkyDrive—designing personal cloud storage for billions of people.

Even with all that we’ve done to integrate SkyDrive into Windows Phone, we still have more to do. In talking with SkyDrive power users, we found that many still want the full SkyDrive experience from Windows Phone, including tasks like browsing their entire SkyDrive, sharing links to folders or files, deleting files, and creating folders. Many people who have more than a few dozen files will start to organize them, and we want to make sure people have a direct representation of SkyDrive on their phone. Folders are a natural and time-tested way to organize groups of files, and browsing based on how files are already organized is important for SkyDrive power users.

“If SkyDrive is where I chose to put my stuff, don’t limit what I can do with it,” they told us. So while the Pictures hub is the best way to experience SkyDrive photos, and the Office apps are the best way to view and edit SkyDrive documents, some people still wanted to go further.

Starting today, you can now use the new SkyDrive app on Windows Phone 7.5 to do more with your SkyDrive. It’s available in every country/region where we offer Windows Phone.

SkyDrive for iPhone

We realize that not everyone who relies on SkyDrive for sharing photos or accessing Office documents uses Windows Phone… yet. We have a long history of supporting iPhone customers with built-in support for Hotmail and with apps like Bing, Messenger, OneNote (with SkyDrive sync), and now Skype.

More generally, we believe you should have access to your personal content no matter which device you use. This is why we are excited to invest in HTML5—both on the web and on mobile—on http://skydrive.com.

On the iPhone, we’ve taken the next step by making the new SkyDrive app for iPhone available in 32 languages worldwide. In addition to their OneNote notebooks, iPhone customers can now access all of their files in SkyDrive, create folders, delete files, and share links to folders and files directly using the Mail app.