Quip, the mobile-first collaboration-oriented word-processing app that launched on iOS (s aapl) devices about four months ago is finally launching for Android (s goog) on Thursday.
Quip for Android works great on Android tablets as well as Android phones. The app is designed to natively support large screen sizes like the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10, showing you an expanded view of your Desktop and Inbox when you open the app.
The company, co-founded by former Facebook chief technology officer Bret Taylor, has created many unique Android-only features, the company said in a blog post.
For instance, automatic Google account integration, third party keyboard support (Swiftkey for example), deeper integration with the phone book. and Stacked Notifications (multiple notifications automatically stack so notification screen doesn’t get cluttered) which I find is pretty cool way to deal with notification overload.
Notifications, and improving their usage and integration into applications has been key part of Quip’s design focus, as Bret had explained in a conversation with me at our Roadmap 2013 conference. You can watch my interview with him here.
It’s awesome to see more productivity and collaboration centric apps enter the mobile environment. After all, productivity become increasingly important as more firms lean towards a mobile first approach where information users are intimately engaging with customers without always having to jump hurdles to make things happen. T-Systems calls this level of intimacy zero distance.
The true judge though of success is whether or not these apps integrate seamlessly with existing enterprise tools and whether or not users are willing to embrace them. They need to be appealing and functional or they will soon prove useless.
Peter Fretty