Is the PlayBook getting Office?

Sources tell us that RIM’s new partnership with Microsoft is more than just Bing on PlayBook. Whispers that we hear seem to indicate that talks are currently on the way to bring Office to Playbook. Before you get too excited, it is hard to say right now how this would be implemented. Currently, no one seems to know if this will be native applications that run on the PlayBook, or if instead it would take advantage of Microsoft’s new Office web offerings. What seems to be a bit more interesting, however, is the suggestion that some sort of version of Outlook might be the new replacement mail application for the PlayBook. No one seems to know how the pricing would work, or whether it would instead be installed on the PlayBook as a trial that would require some sort of payment to fully activate it for use. No matter: we have to believe that the entire thing spills into the rumors that Microsoft intends to offer Office for the ARM processors to go along with Windows. Office for PlayBook might just end up being a head start on that strategy for Microsoft. Expect this story to get much hotter in the next could of months, as the two companies figure out the right way to make this happen.