“If Microsoft couldn’t find compelling enough reasons to release its Office applications for the iPad, Google just gave it one,” Nick Wingfiled reports for The New York Times. “On Tuesday, Google acquired Quickoffice, a start-up that makes a set of applications for iPads and Android tablets that let people open and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. Productivity apps are among the best sellers in the category of paid apps for the iPad. Quickoffice currently ranks seventh on that list in Apple’s iPad App Store.”
“Microsoft’s apps group is not ignoring the iPad; the company is working on a version of its Office apps for Apple’s tablet, according to several people familiar with the project who were not authorized to speak publicly about it,” Wingfiled reports. “According to one of the people familiar with the effort, Microsoft still has not settled important details, such as when it will release the software and [for] how much the software will sell.”
“These are gut-wrenching decisions for Microsoft. First, the company has its own answer to the iPad coming out this fall in the form of Windows 8, its first operating system designed from the ground up with touch screens in mind. One of the chief selling points of Windows 8 tablets, especially to business customers, will be that they can run an official version of Office designed for those devices. An Office for the iPad could hurt Windows 8’s chances of capturing a chunk of the tablet business,” Wingfiled reports. “There is also the question of how Microsoft designs Office for iPad and prices it so it doesn’t cannibalize sales of the software for computers.”
Wingfiled reports, “But the risks of neglecting the huge growth of the iPad could be even greater for Microsoft. The iPad is becoming especially popular among the professional customers Microsoft focuses on with Office. Office, along with Windows, is a pillar of Microsoft’s still-enormous profits.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last Friday, “For Microsoft, Office for iPad is a catch-22. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t. How much do you want to bet that Office for iPad, if released, will be a dumbed-down version à la Office for the Mac?”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Makka” for the heads up.]
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