Microsoft releases OWA for iPhone, iPad

New, free Microsoft Outlook Web App clients for iPhone and iPad are available in the Apple App Store, but require an Office 365 subscription for use.

Microsoft has built native Outlook Web App clients for Apple's iPhone and iPad, both of which can be installed directly from the Apple App Store as of July 16.

(Credit: Microsoft)

The catch: Users need an Office 365 subscription that includes Exchange Online to make use of the new, free apps.

Outlook Web App (OWA) is a client with that provides email, calendar, and contact functionality. It works the same way that Outlook Web App in the browser does. However, according to a new Office 365 Technology blog post from Microsoft, the native versions provide "additional capabilities that are only possible through native integration of the app with mobile devices."

From today's blog post:

Windows Phone 8 comes with a top-notch native email client in Outlook Mobile, and we offer Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), which is the de-facto industry standard for accessing Exchange email on mobile devices. In order to better support many of our customers who use their iPhones and iPads for work, we are introducing OWA for iPhone and OWA for iPad, which bring a native Outlook Web App experience to iOS devices!

The Outlook Web App for iPhone is available for download here. The iPad version is here.

The Office 365 plans which support Outlook Web App include: Office 365 Small Business; Office 365 Small Business Premium; Office 365 Midsize Business; Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3 and E4; Office 365 Kiosk K1 and K2; Office 365 Education A2, A3 and A4; and any Exchange Online plan. There are also Office 365 government plans that include OWA for iPhone and OWA for iPad. Users must be running iPhone 4 or higher or an iPad 2 or higher (both of which are running iOS 6 or higher) to use the new apps. The OWA apps are available in the same 60 languages supported by Exchange Online for Outlook Web App in the browser, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft introduced last month an Office Mobile for iPhone suite, which also requires an Office 365 subscription.

(Thanks to Windows SuperSite's Paul Thurrott for the tip-off about the OWA client availability.) This story originally appeared as "Microsoft delivers native Outlook Web App clients for iPhone, iPad" on ZDNet.