Today, Nokia and Microsoft announced that they would deliver Symbian software updates called Microsoft Apps. These updates will add some serious business productivity tools for anyone buying a new Symbian Belle device, as well as anybody looking to upgrade from Symbian Anna to Symbian Belle. Read on to find out exactly what’s coming, and when.

If you’re into downloading apps that’ll increase your productivity – and we know you all are – you’ll be happy to hear that during the fourth quarter of this year you’ll be able to start up the Software Update app from within your phone and find the following free apps:

• Microsoft® Lync™ 2010 Mobile – for cost efficient IM, presence, audio and web meetings on-the-go.
• Microsoft® PowerPoint® Broadcast – quick broadcast of presentations directly from PC to mobile.
• Microsoft® OneNote™ – rich note taking with images. Syncs with Microsoft® SkyDrive®.
• Microsoft® Document Connection – single view to documents stored on mobile, including email attachments as well as documents on Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 sites.

If that wasn’t enough, a second update in early 2012 will add:

• Microsoft OneNote sync with SharePoint (in addition to SkyDrive)

as well as adding Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint as native applications for the first time outside the Windows platform.

If you use your Nokia smartphone for work as well as leisure these apps will transform even the stylish, mass market smartphones we recently launched into a mobile office.

These updates are yet another confirmation that Nokia has not done making investments and introducing innovation into the Symbian platform. There will be more updates in 2012 and more devices to come and Nokia has already said, we will provide software support to Symbian until at least 2016. Symbian is hugely important to our future ambitions and this latest announcement is just another example of the role that Symbian will play…

With support for Symbian in the years to come, there’s plenty of time to get used to some of the apps you may be using to take advantage of the new Nokia with Windows Phone smartphones.

Are you looking forward to getting more productive with these new Microsoft Apps? Let us know in the comments, below.