Microsoft launched Outlook for Android and iOS phones and tablets on Thursday.

Office division general manager Julia White told TechCrunch that the new applications are based on the technology acquired when Microsoft bought the Latino-founded email app Acompli in December.

"We brought that team in, and it's now a core part of our Outlook team," she said.

These new apps will replace all of Microsoft's current range of Outlook-branded apps, including the Outlook.com app for Android and the OWA apps for Android and iOS available for paying Office 365 subscribers. While the older apps will still be available, Microsoft plans to nix those over time, so the company highly recommends that Outlook.com users switch to the new Outlook app.

The new apps retain much of the look and feel of the original Acompli apps. There are some Office-app like details, including a colored ribbon-like UI.

White wants consumers to know that the Outlook apps aren't just for email triage.

"They live up to the Outlook promise," she said. "The Outlook user base will certainly be excited about this."

Outlook, like Acompli, will support Office 365, Outlook.com, Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and other email providers. The new app also enables you to send attachments through cloud services like Microsoft's OneDrive and Dropbox. The Outlook apps now support swipe gestures that can be customized.

Thursday's launch is a full release of the iOS version, while the Android version is in preview and not supported yet. Once Microsoft gathers data about how the apps run on Android's broad hardware ecosystem, it will launch a revised version of the app and announce its availability on Android.

Microsoft has not yet announced the Android final version release date.

Microsoft bought Acompli for $200 million in December 2014. The Acompli team of approximately two dozen people joined Microsoft as a part of the deal.

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