Interview with QuickOffice’s Craig Senick

We had a chance to interview Craig Senick, QuickOffice’s director of business development. In a 5-question interview he summarizes the company’s history, competitive edge and future plans. Plus, he shares some tips for developers. Enjoy!

Q: Can you please introduce us with QuickOffice? How did you start?

A: Quickoffice started in 1996 when a software engineer began to develop a spreadsheet application on the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) OS platform. Appropriately, it was named Quicksheet. From that point the company continued to grow and expand. Awards were won and accolades were given to the team. We now have products on both Palm OS and Symbian OS and we have expanded our product line significantly to include a word processing application, Quickword, and a presentation application, Quickpoint. We just introduced a revolutionary new on device catalog that allows our customers to update and upgrade their software from their smartphone.

Q: Beside QuickOffice, there are some other mobile office suites available on the market. What distinguishes QuickOffice from its competitors?

A: There are many things that separate Quickoffice from the competitors. Quickoffice has specialized in delivering high quality software to OEMs such as Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE), BenQ, Lennovo, Panasonic (NYSE: PC), etc. Quickoffice is now localized in more than 40 languages and is tested for its data integrity–editing files in all languages. On a volume basis, Quickoffice is on more than 70% of the phones with a mobile office.

Q: We saw QuickOffice 4 demo presented at the Symbian Smartphone Show. When can we expect the full version?

A: Quickoffice v4 will be available this year. It is a major advance in the capabilities and quality of mobile office solutions.

Q: Over the time QuickOffice received many awards and acknowledgments including the latest – Best Enterprise Application award in Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge. What’s next for QuickOffice?

A: Quickoffice v4 includes most of top features requested by our customers. We will continue to add features that increase the usability of Quickoffice. In addition, we will expand into new areas with complementary applications. An example of this is our new expense reporting application that allows users to track their expenses using a simple form front end and generates an Excel expense report. This is just one example of leveraging the office suite capabilities for increasing our customer’s productivity.

Q: Finally, being the very successful mobile development company – can you share with other mobile developers some “tricks of the trade”? How can they make successful mobile applications?

A: There is not a shortcut to being successful. Quickoffice has been working for 10 years to become an “overnight” success. Our strategy has been to stay focused on one area and do it better than anyone else. We focus our business development and product development strategy on achieving our overall business objectives. My advice is to find an area with potential, develop a strategy specific to the opportunity, stay patiently focused, and build high-quality solutions.