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In a move that is both anti-climatic and somewhat obvious, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has indicated that Office is coming to the iPad. While no specific details have been announced, Ballmer spoke about an iPad version while speaking at a Gartner event in Orlando Tuesday.
“iPad will be picked up when… there’s a touch first user interface.”
According to sources of theverge.com, Microsoft chief operating officer Kevin Turner is reported as expressing the “need to own the productivity experience across all devices.” While there currently isn’t a touch first version, it appears that one is in development for the windows platform and that means an iPad version will follow.
The big question is about how the iPad version will be made available. My best guess is based on the iPhone version which is already available and requires an Office 365 subscription. The iPhone version is not a full version of Microsoft Office and uses a simplified set of productivity tools. Office 365 costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 per year and if I read enough of the comments on theverge.com article, the hope is that the iPad app wont require a subscription.
I don’t see Microsoft Office going away anytime soon, but I also don’t envision that an iPad version is going to make a big difference either way. There are already Google and Apple solutions and they are cheap. It seems to me that Apple is interested in providing a lot of inexpensive apps as a means to help people justify buying their expensive devices and that Microsoft is using their subscription service to help recoup some of their losses in the tablet market.
Will Microsoft stop running those commercials which claim the iPad is useless if Office is made available on the iPad? I sincerely hope Microsoft runs out of the budget allocated to that ad campaign soon.
[via theverge.com]
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