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Microsoft rebrands Acompli as Outlook for iOS and Android

Microsoft rebrands Acompli as Outlook for iOS and Android

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Microsoft is bringing a fully featured version of Outlook to iOS and Android today. The launch comes less than two months after Microsoft acquired email app Acompli in early December, and the software maker is turning Acompli into Outlook mobile. Available for free in the App Store or Google Play, the new Outlook apps are identical to Acompli. This is simply a rebrand for now, but that won’t be the case for long. Microsoft is planning to update its new Outlook apps regularly.

"We have been and we’ll continue to update the app weekly," says Julia White, Microsoft’s general manager of Office. "So in a very short period time you’ll start to see variance from the Acompli app that will not be updated after that point." While some might have expected Microsoft to remove Acompli’s integration with Google Drive and Dropbox, Microsoft is keeping these powerful features. The similarities mean the Outlook apps have the same quick access to calendar, contacts, mail, and files, just like the desktop variant of Outlook.

Acompli morphs into Outlook for iOS and Android

Before Microsoft’s acquisition, The Verge called Acompli "the Outlook for iPhone that Microsoft hasn’t yet built," and it’s clear it was good enough to acquire and brand as Outlook itself. One of the popular features of Acompli is the ability to swipe and archive or delete emails, and even schedule a time that’s convenient to come back and read an email or send a reply. There’s also a focused inbox that aims to remove clutter and surface emails that matter. Outlook for iOS and Android will support Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and other major email providers.

Microsoft’s plans for the future of its Outlook app for Android and iOS are focused on business and enterprise users of the application, explains White in an interview with The Verge. "We’ll be rounding out the really important business and organizational capability of the app too." That’s hardly surprising given the target audience of an Outlook app, and Microsoft is also bringing some of the features of this Outlook app over to mobile versions for Windows 10. The software maker demonstrated an early copy of Outlook for Windows 10 that included customizable swipe gestures, making it very similar to these Android and iOS versions. Both of the Outlook apps for iOS and Android will debut on the App Store and Google Play today.