“The inevitable is happening,” Rick Aristotle Munarriz writes for The Motley Fool. “Microsoft is reportedly working on rolling out Microsoft Office in iPad form.”
“Apple sold 11.1 million iPad 2 tablets in its latest quarter alone, so clearly this is a booming computing market that the world’s largest software company needs to address,” Munarriz writes. “If Windows is starting to fade as an operating system of choice for light computers powered by Apple’s iOS and Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG ) Android, why should Microsoft’s productivity suite go down with the ship? Android and iOS weren’t even around five years ago, yet both platforms now have more than 200 million activated devices apiece.”
Munarriz writes, “Apple’s own Pages word processing and Numbers spreadsheet programs — as well as Quickoffice suite — have been among the top premium iPad apps since the tablet’s inception last year… Apple charges $9.99 for stand-alone versions of its Pages, Numbers, and Keynote iWork components… There’s really no way that Microsoft can win here. Sure, it can scale back the functionality of its tablet apps to justify the pricing discrepancy between its PC versions, but then it still has to compete with more full-featured dedicated apps… Tell me how this leads to folks sending more money to Microsoft in the future — because I don’t see it.”
Read more in the full article here.
James Kendrick writes for ZDNet, “This looming pricing dilemma is going to be one of the biggest threats Microsoft has had to deal with in a long time. It is unusual for a company to confront the damage it might do to a major segment of its own business, but that’s what it is facing. The company can’t (or shouldn’t) release a version of tablet apps for the competition (iPad) at higher than competitive prices, but pricing them properly could permanently affect a big portion of its core business. There should be some Microsoft executives having some late-night meetings in Redmond dealing with this.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Do not question Steve Ballmer. He knows exactly what he’s doing. We like his strategy. We like it a lot.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward Weber” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Microsoft working on Office for iPad, say sources – November 29, 2011
• Tell me how this leads to folks sending more money to Microsoft…
Do some people still really do that?
No more than we have to. My Apple Mouse no longer scrolls. An Apple mouse costs too much. A Lenovo on sale shows compatibility only with Windows. But a Microsoft wireless Mobile Mouse for $11 that works with my iMac is something I can live with.
If it’s a MagicMouse, and it’s not completely broken, sometimes rolling it upside-down on a clean sheet of paper will clean it out & get it rolling again.
I almost hate to say it, but my son’s non-bluetooth, wireless MS keyboard and mouse are great products. I much prefer the way the cursor behaves with his MS mouse.
I really hate the way the cursor moves with my bluetooth, wireless MS mouse (50¢ at a yard sale)… or my Apple Magic Trackpad. Cursor drift, delay and imprecise movement makes doing anything frustrating. I haven’t bought an Apple mouse because (being as it is bluetooth also) I presume it would behave the same way.
Bullshit
I like their strategy, I like it a lot.
Can you imagine the ribbon interface on an iPad? 🙂
Or even better: The ipod!!!
Office for iPad makes great sense. It keeps the behemoth alive and makes people think it is relevant.
What if people found out you could live without office?
Surely it is better to release a buggy or crippled version of Office for iPad, then people will comment how much better Office runs on Windows Phone 8.
Sound familiar?
office for ipad? no, because the app review process will look deep into the code and find a mess of crap
my prediction: not approved due to memory leaks, etc.
they Betta jump on the iPad gravy train somehow rotfl
Microsoft Word iPad Student Edition
Microsoft Word iPad Business Edition
Microsoft Word iPad Business Media Edition
Microsoft Word iPad Home Edition
Microsoft Word iPad Old English Edition
Microsoft Word iPad extra cheese Edition
Microsoft Word iPad no cheese extra mushrooms Edition
Microsoft Word iPad half Italian sausage, half extra cheese Edition
Microsoft Word iPad half student, half business edition, extra cheese
Too funny!
32 bit or 64 bit? 🙂
2 bit
heh or maybe “obit.”
Windows is a 64 bit GUI for a set of 32 bit extensions on a 16 bit shell for an 8 bit OS using a 4 bit kernel made by a 2 bit company without 1 bit of innovation.
Awesome
HaHa, that is funny as hell.
Brilliant!
If it is approved, it would have to be cheaper than pages etc.
Granted there are many that buy office for Mac JUST cause they think they need office…
Even if it’s more than apple, it will sell.
I’d grab at least word if it’s free/.99
More than that… Pass.
Interestingly, Microsoft already has 12 iOS apps in the App Store. But they are all relatively small things that are free. There is no way Microsoft will match Apple’s price of $9.99 for each part of the office suite.
No matter what the price is, if there is an Office for iPad, it will only help Apple by making iPad even more “legit” in the workplace. Apple would not really care too much if a user (or business) buys Office instead of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, as long as the device is an iPad. Apple doesn’t need Office for iPad, but it certainly would not hurt iPad sales to have it. And it would probably drive Ballmer nuts to think about Apple’s 30% cut on every sale.
It seems like a strange move by Microsoft, ahead of Windows 8 for tablets. It would be hilarious if there was an Office for iPad, but no immediate tablet (ARM-based) version of Office for Windows 8.
“Android and iOS weren’t even around five years ago”
Correct, inasmuch as neither existed outside of a lab.
I have iWork ’09 and Office for Mac 2011 installed in my Mac and I find that I use Word more than Pages as most of the documents I receive or have to collaborate on are formatted in Word. Although I hate the Ribbon interface on MS Office 2010 for Windows, the Mac version is surprisingly pleasant to use. I think it’s because it follows Apple’s design guidelines to the extent that MS is compelled to simplify UI elements rather than introduce bloated spaghetti code, unlike its Windows counterpart.
I have Documents To Go installed on my iPhone & iPad and find that app surprisingly pleasant to use due to its compatibility with Office formats. I don’t think I’ll be buying Office for the iPad as I don’t do any serious work on the iPad apart from reviewing documents and making minor revisions before sending them out again to other team members.
The one thing I dislike about iOS mail is the inability to attach documents when replying to mail as it lacks a hierarchical file structure that is visible to the user. So the effectiveness of apps like iWork is limited as you cannot attach files to mail which severely restricts its usefulness. I think Apple should look seriously into a folder system at least as pertains to mail.
It seems inevitable but you can email attachments by way of emailing files from their respective apps. I do it everyday from my iPad. I haven’t decided which method is the better of the two as both concepts work quite well.
You can initiate original mail by attaching files but you cannot maintain a thread by replying to mail and attach files. This weakness was what I was pointing out.
My wife is a professional editor and writer who uses Pages exclusively because she likes the interface better, particularly for viewing comments and tracked changes. Her corporate clients email her Word docs, she opens them in Pages, edits and “Share”s them back to the clients as Word docs. All the comments and change tracking stay clean even with multiple back and forth volleys of the same document. The clients never even know the doc ever went through Pages. In the last few years she has never encountered a problem or incompatibility.
Unfortunately, I’m always getting formatting issues dues to the fact that the .docs I work with are all comprised of tables. It seems that Pages can’t deal too well with different table cells being merged and splitin Word, resulting in some bizarre formatting. It’s the single biggest obstacle in me using my iPad 2 as a productivity machine.
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Hey Monkey Boy, “4 as Long as it Takes”
The article and subsequent comments don’t give much of a rationale for the assumption that the Office apps need to be the same price as the iWork apps.
I would offer (whilst not personally supporting) that MS would position the iPad Office Edition as “professional business” applications that integrated with Sharepoint (as opposed to iCloud?) and Skydive and as such deserve a significant premium to the consumer grade iWork apps.
This is entirely consistent with MS current strategy that we all like so much and I would expect the apps to sell as a bundle at $149.
How can this be a mistake?
I was looking at Apple Office Apps for iPhone and iPad the other day and was wondering about Microsoft and why they haven’t released any Office product for iOS yet. Makes perfect sense. Numbers, Pages and all the other Apps looks great, have never used them though but I bet ALLOT of people are looking for something like Office for iOS. I would certainly by it if it’s not too expensive. I think Office for iOS with integration with exchange and all the other Microsoft products would be a BIG hit in the Enterprise.
are you drunk or somethin?
No. I’m a real Apple fanboy actually. But even for people less excited about Office in general or for those who prefer Apple’s offerings must see how this really can drive adoption further in the Enterprise and with normal consumers.
“Numbers, Pages and all the other Apps looks great, have never used them…”
This pretty much says it all – try them.
Well, I still MUST use Word for total compatibility with Windows users of Office in the academic world…
You mean those in academia don’t want to learn something different?
The “mistake” in the headline alludes to the problem of pricing—and the need for a different business model. I can think of a few reasons why the venture isn’t a total boat anchor.
Strategically, Microsoft will position its Windows 8 slates as the preferred mobile platform running Office. Establishing an “iPad Lite” version of Office prepares an upgrade path to the W8 slate version, with the PC version, the real cash cow, sitting at the top of the hill. Doing this effectively positions iPad as a starter tablet, thereby marginalizing it and helping W8 slate get traction.
In other words, Microsoft will disable key features in the lesser versions, just as they’ve done for years to the Mac versions. Those features are Microsoft’s insurance policy that their revenue flow stays essentially intact.
Jane, I’d pay as much for Office on the iPad as a carton of Red Mango Madagascar Vanilla Frozen Yogurt (small). Or does that come in Vente? 😉
Do you mean Venti? Look, what’s the point of even larger sizes when the idea is to keep the weight down? Let’s say $4.99. I’d pay that for Excel. Keep the rest.
I was just joshing with ya. I’m quite happy using Documents To Go. $9.99 for the ‘Lite’ version that can read Word & Excel files. I don’t need any more than that. It can’t read native Pages format but if you save as a Word file, then it’s ok. Cheap enough for what it does.
I’ll take a look at it. Thanks.
If you’re on the same Wi-Fi network as your Mac, you can transfer files between your Mac and iPhone & iPad wirelessly by dragging & dropping files into the designated DTG folder which appears on your desktop. No need for wired sync. Most useful.
Jobs used to say customers often don’t know what they want or need until we show it to them. Well, we’ve seen Office. We don’t need it.
That would be nice. Just dont price the software too high for each version.
Maybe charge $4.99 for Personal and $9.99 for Profesional. Just dont do something like charge $12.99 for Personal and $22.99 for Profesional. That is just plain crazy. Especially with the competition.
MS could easily sell the entire Office suite for $79 – $150 per version.
Easily. The problem is that most of us Macaddicts misunderstand how many Windows Users Using iPads (WUUIs)there are. For these people, Office is still a strong source of symbolic and emotional comfort to the middle aged and the elderly and the newly converted.
Would MS have to lower their prices? Of course. But as long as MS treats iPad as a new revenue stream rather than a loss to netbooks and laptops, they can still succeed.
In this case Apple and MS would have a mutually beneficial relationship on the iPad platform.
Of course, I would still like to see MS die.
But not as much as I would Google these days.
ALL collaborative work in my field (academic science) involves .docs and .xlsx files; being able to open, view and edit these, without messing up the formatting, would make huge difference to the perceived and real value of the iPad in the workplace.
Red herring alert:
Most enterprises run Windows for the *compatibility* between all computers and the simplicity/economy of only having to train employees in one suite. The cost of the software is moot unless unless you’re talking hundreds per license. Windows therefore can offer 100 percent compatibility with their Office suite (something neither Apple nor others can ever achieve) and charge whatever they want.
For many enterprises, even running MacOffice or using Parallels ion your Mac is not good enough, you have to boot into Windows. If you don’t, formatting errors often creep into documents somehow (MS appears to like it that way).
I understand that there are some “differences” between WinOffice and Macoffice. But do you really mean that if a run Excel under Parallels formatting errors are likely?
I understand that there are some “differences” between WinOffice and Macoffice. But do you really mean that if I run Excel under Parallels formatting errors are likely?
You guys are missing the point. The MAIN thing MSFT wants is to keep a tight lock on the DOCX and such formats. I would love to ditch MS Word on my Mac but I can’t because my clients all use MS Word on Windows and send me DOCX with those fancy MS “features” in the docs.
“because my clients all use MS Word on Windows…”
And I’ll bet the vast majority of all of our clients are having the exact same conversations. Someone has to be the first.