After the leak concerning Microsoft's possible new email-based chat app for iPhone called Flow earlier this week, a report on ZDNET seems to confirm its existence and also suggests that it will be part of a new suite of project management apps that will feature two others called Flip and Highlander (both potentially working titles).
Flip is said to be a lightweight collaboration and document-sharing app that could share some of the chat functions from the Flow app but would also focus primarily on document editing, creation and collaboration which sounds fairly similar to features in Office 365 and Yammer though the report does specifically mention that these new apps are not future iterations of Yammer and that Microsoft will be going in a new direction with Yammer while continuing to offer it as a stand-alone productivity solution.
Highlander on the other hand, is focused more on project-management and will provide tools for updating team members on the status of projects and tasks and watch progress. The sources also claim that Flip and Flow could feature LinkedIn and Facebook at Work integration which could give people the ability to target communications with specific users. This actually brings to mind the People app on Windows and Windows Phone which offers a similar way to collate data from specific contacts' social feeds.
Pretty much all of the features mentioned for these new apps are already available on several other Microsoft services and apps so judging from what has been leaked so far, Microsoft's aim for Flow, Flip and Highlander appear to be more about restructuring and rebranding existing services in a new package in a similar way to what they're doing with Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge.
What are your thoughts on Flip, Flow, and Highlander? Do you think they could be something cool or should Microsoft be focusing their energies elsewhere? Let us know in the comments below.
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