Michal Marek Microsoft has officially bought Sunrise, one of the best calendars for iOS, Android and Mac. The software giant from Redmond reportedly paid more than $100 million (2,4 billion crowns) for the acquisition.
Microsoft has been working really hard lately to produce new or improved mobile apps for iOS and Android, and the purchase of the Sunrise calendar fits nicely into Microsoft's current strategy. At the beginning of February, the company released an excellent Outlook for iOS and Android, which originated from the popular email application Acompli and only underwent a Microsoft rebranding.
Sunrise is a hugely popular calendar that supports a whole host of related services, and Microsoft could do the same with it. However, the situation is different in that Microsoft has no established brand for the calendar to build upon and convert Sunrise under. It is therefore possible that the application will remain in the App Store and Google Play stores in its current form and the acquisition will not have any visible effect. However, visible promotion from Microsoft can be expected.
The second alternative, how they could deal with the newly acquired calendar in Redmond, is its integration directly into Outlook. Microsoft's mail client has its own calendar built in, but Sunrise is certainly a more comprehensive solution that would undoubtedly enrich Outlook. In addition, Microsoft could thus gain new customers for its mail application who liked Sunrise in the past.
If you're not familiar with Sunrise, you can try it for free on iOS, Android, Mac and in a web browser. Sunrise supports calendar from Google, iCloud and Microsoft Exchange. It is also possible to connect many secondary services such as Foursquare, Google Tasks, Producteev, Trello, Songkick, Evernote or Todoist. For the calendar from Google, input using natural language also works.
Sunrise was founded in 2012 and thanks to investors it has so far earned a nice 8,2 million dollars.
[appbox app store 599114150]
Déjà vu?
Will it be like Skype?
I think not = MS is going in the right direction - since they fired Balmer!
But it took them a while :-).