Today the two companies have announced details of their new partnership to design, develop, and market mobile productivity solutions. In a nutshell, this agreement means that Nokia Symbian devices will get native capability to view and edit Microsoft Office documents.

With the new agreement, the two firms will collaborate on solutions that will be offered on a broad range of Nokia smartphone starting with the Eseries range aimed at business users. The solutions developed under the partnership will be marketed to both carriers and to consumers directly.

“With more than 200 million smartphone customers globally, Nokia is the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer and a natural partner for us,” said Stephen Elop. “Today’s announcement will enable us to expand Microsoft Office Mobile to Nokia smartphone owners worldwide and allow them to collaborate on Office documents from anywhere, as part of our strategy to provide the best productivity experience across the PC, phone, and browser.”

The announcement will allow Nokia to build on the work it is already doing to allow its Symbian devices to work well with Microsoft corporate email services like Exchange ActiveSync. Nokia says that it will begin shipping devices with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile next year with other Office applications coming later.

The other applications will provide the ability to edit, create, and share Office documents with Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Enterprise IM capabilities will be featured along with mobile intranet and extranet access. There is no word on how or if the injunction baring sales of Microsoft Word issued yesterday will impact the new agreement.

“The scope of the alliance between Microsoft and Nokia, and potential value for the enterprise and individual is significant,” said Stephen Drake, VP of Mobility & Telecom at IDC. “By bringing Microsoft’s productivity solutions to Nokia’s large customer base, the two companies should be better able to serve the needs of the growing mobile worker population, which IDC estimates to reach 1 billion worldwide in 2011.”