It's official: The Internet is well and truly going mobile. In the final quarter of last year, more smartphones than PCs were purchased and marketers can expect anything between 12% and 20% of searches in their sector to originate on a mobile device. If you own a smartphone, you've got the world at your fingertips. And now that the Windows Phone comes with mobile versions of all your favourite Office apps, you can work anywhere at any time.

However the single most important factor in the growth of smartphones is the rise of apps. High-quality touch screens, built-in GPS, and accelerometers are engaging, but hardware continues, with better components, to evolve constantly over time. Mobile devices come and go, but apps have always been at the forefront to drive sales - which has obviously meant an increase in apps research and development.

Faster, easier to use and more accurate software is the key to success and future development. As developers come up with more apps, this in turn drives the next generation of devices needed to support these apps. Hardware is evolving as a result of the software requirements, and not the other way around.

Smartphone apps now make it possible for people to go beyond the Web to do what they need to both inside and outside of the office. Businesses are aware of this trend and are making apps a priority. Smartphone users are going to be mobile themselves, so making them happy means businesses need to reach them using apps available on any device. Again it's apps, not hardware, that deliver the products, services, and marketing messages that customers want.

And with Microsoft Word Mobile, you can create new Microsoft Word documents or read and revise existing ones on your phone. Word Mobile is part of Microsoft Office Mobile and so if you have a Windows Phone 7 it's already part of the in the Office hub. This means that you don't need to download anything else to get started. And you can share your Word documents from your phone by saving your changes back to the shared document on a SharePoint site, sending a link to the document on the SharePoint site in email, or by sending the document itself in email.

You can then open and edit the document on your computer using Microsoft Word 2010 or online in a web browser using Microsoft Word Web App. Currently Word Mobile does not support all the features in Microsoft Word 2010. If a document has content that's not supported in Word Mobile, you can still open the document on your phone, but the unsupported content won't be displayed.

Excel Mobile allows you to work with worksheets, charts, tables and formulas by inserting numbers and text, edit cells, and add comments. And OneNote Mobile has most of the features you would expect for taking notes, adding voice clips, pictures, and lists. You can even sync it all to Windows Live online, and view or show presentations with PowerPoint Mobile while you are out of the office. You can even edit slides and add notes, as well as being able to tune in to a presentation broadcast over the Internet.

SharePoint Workspace Mobile allows you to view and edit Office documents, and then save them back to your company SharePoint site. You can even work when you're not connected. With Outlook Mobile, use new views to quickly locate and respond to email and stay on top of your calendar. Review, edit, or comment on Office documents and use new navigation tools to quickly jump to the right place every time.

While many argue that anything mobile will be small and weak compared with the power of a "full" computer, the technology is getting cheaper, it's highly targeted, and delivers results quicker - and is taking over the world: how many more reasons do businesses need to mobilise their office software?