Microsoft Acquired An Email App Dubbed As The “Outlook for iPhone”

A week ago, the tech giant had a mistake of releasing a post through the official Microsoft blog and was simply titled "blank post please delete." At first glance, with its title and its body both saying "blank post please delete" it would not catch interest. However, it was the URL of the post that started all the talks: http://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2014/11/25/microsoft-acquires-acompli/

But if someone tries to access the said link, no post with that exact URL will be found on the Microsoft blog. Apparently, the post was immediately deleted after it was posted. If a reader looks closely, the URL would give the impression that Microsoft is planning to announce an acquisition or what-not of a company named Acompli, Business Insider reports.

The rumour was dislodged by the recent blog post announcing Microsoft's purchase of the email app. According to the company's corporate vice president for Outlook and Office 365 Rajesh Jha, the acquisition aims to deliver cross platform apps that can support the variety of email services that could help consumers accomplish more tasks.

Many would ask reasons on why the tech giant acquired the company. According to The Verge, Acompli is a powerhouse email app and was even dubbed as the "Outlook for iPhone" (something that Microsoft hasn't built yet). Basically, the email app is a professional-grade email solution which is set to unchain the email from the desktop. The app targets professionals by helping them find the most important emails in their inbox in the quickest time possible.

Acompli is headed by former VMWare chief technology officer Javier Soltero. The app helps avoid desktop email in two ways appearing as two tabs at the bottom of the inbox.

The first tab is an integrated calendar which helps users browse through upcoming appointments and enables them to set meetings without the need to jump over another application. The calendar can also be found in the message-compose window. Tapping the calendar will pull up two options. First, the user can send their availability by highlighting times with two taps. The second one is by creating a calendar invitation for a specific period of time.

The second tab serves as a cabinet of files where in Acompli puts the files in this tab which allows users to quickly locate files and easily attach them to messages in a single tap. In addition, it also has a contacts tab that keeps a list of recent contacts. It is quite efficient since it generates a list of user's most important contacts. However, it also includes marketing emails from many e-commerce and social media sites to be contacts which make it less useful.

After the acquisition, Microsoft's plans for Acompli are still vague but it is more likely that the said email app will be integrated with its Office 365 offering. Apparently, Acompli is a yet another useful and productive app that the tech company could offer across different platforms.