Nokia and Microsoft to announce Office alliance?

UPDATE: Nokia and Microsoft's collaboration has now been announced.

Nokia (which makes phones and internet tablets) and Microsoft (which makes a mobile OS and about a billion other things) have called a press conference to likely announce the addition of a mobile Office suite for the Finns' smartphones.

At 1600 UK time the two tech giants will seemingly put down their Symbian and Windows Mobile swords, link arms and march to meet the world's media, with the Wall Street Journal claiming that they will announce a mobile Office suite for Nokia's phones.

Up until now, users of most smartphones have had to make do with QuickOffice or defaulting to Google Docs, and it's likely the latter which has forced Microsoft's hand to protect it's Office suite from the search giant's cloud-based threat.

However, the press release sent out was pretty non-committal over such a deal: "Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft Business Division, and Kai Öistämö, executive vice president for Nokia Devices, announce alliance."

Links from the past

Of course, the two do have a history of small link ups - we've seen Nokia offer support for Microsoft's Silverlight platform, and Nokia's phones taking the Redmond giant's PlayReady file format.

However, we want to believe that perhaps this Office rumour is a smokescreen to something bigger, something game changing (or perhaps we just hoped it would be more interesting than an Office link up.

Could there be some link up between Symbian and Windows Mobile? Could Nokia's long-awaited netbook be coming running Windows 7? Could the two of them have rummaged down the back of the sofa, pooled their respective findings and simply bought Android off Google?

Check out the press release to find out all the details (well, detail), including how you can watch it too.