“According to NPD Group, Apple’s efforts with iWork have paid off. The revamped suite has captured 16 percent of the office productivity application sales on the Mac, with Microsoft’s Office taking the rest. While that figure is ‘a success for Apple,’ NPD says, the market-research firm doesn’t feel that number is sustainable once Office 2008 arrives on the Mac,” Jim Dalrymple reports for Macworld.
MacDailyNews Take: The article really doesn’t say how Microsoft is going to recover those Mac users they’ve lost to iWork. 16-percent of office productivity sales is quite impressive; even more so when you factor in that iWork costs US$79 vs. Office’s double or higher retail price).
“‘Office 2008 is going to be a successful product and its going to take the air out of iWork’s tires,’ said Swenson,” Dalrymple reports.
MacDailyNews Take: We know many, including ourselves who dumped PowerPoint for Keynote years ago, Word for Pages last year, and Excel for Numbers this year. We’re not going to run out to buy Office now that we’ve finally been liberated.
When Apple released the updated iWork ’08 “back in August, executives said the goal was to create applications that offered a Mac-like approach to tasks such as word-processing and spreadsheets. ‘[Some people] want to enjoy the way they work, they want their work product to look great, and [they want to be] fundamentally integrated into iLife,’ Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of applications product marketing told Macworld in August,” Dalrymple reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Many Mac users — the majority, we believe — think they need Office, but really don’t. Give Apple’s free 30-day iWork ’08 trial a try and see for yourself.
