- It is well known that Turkey’s don’t vote for Christmas so why on earth would Microsoft want to make Office available on iOS anytime soon?
- The notion that Microsoft will make Office available on iOS and Android has surfaced yet again (The Verge) and really stems from the leak (Early October 2012) from Microsoft’s Czech operation.
- This basically asserted that early 2013 would see native Office for iOS, Windows Phone and Symbian.
- Symbian?!? This makes no sense at all as Symbian volumes are plummeting to zero making it a total waste of money to develop anything for it.
- This greatly adds to my scepticism that this idea is a large red herring.
- Even looking at the long term I struggle to see how this makes sense.
- Office gives utility to the user and I believe is something that 75% of all computer users care about.
- In many cases they probably care more about Office than they do about Microsoft Windows.
- Therefore a user who needs to use Office will also pay for a copy of Windows because the software is not really available anywhere else (except MacOS).
- If a good quality copy of Office is made available on iOS and Android then that user will have less of an incentive to buy a Windows 8 Ultrabook or Tablet thereby costing Microsoft an OS sale.
- Currently, a version of Office on iOS and Android will be vastly inferior to the full version on Windows 8 and even a keyboard and a mouse will offer an inferior user experience.
- Perhaps Microsoft thinks that because it is a mini-version, that it won’t affect sales or demand for its big brother, but why take the risk?
- In my view would amount to putting ones head in the lion’s mouth full in the knowledge that the lion had not eaten for 2 weeks.
- The chaps over at Microsoft may have struggled vainly for years to break out of their OS / Office / Server mould, but they are not stupid.
- This represents an enormous risk for very little gain.
- Perhaps much further ahead in time when the OS is irrelevant having been commoditised to zero and Microsoft is just a services company, then this might be a good idea.
- Until that time, I expect Microsoft to use every advantage that it can get to carve a position for itself in the new ecosystem world.
- Office represents a big advantage for Microsoft and I really doubt that it is about to hand that to Apple and Google on a plate.
Blog Comments
tatilsever
November 8, 2012 at 11:01 am
Of course Office exclusivity would help MS gain more traction for WP8 and Win-RT, but isn’t Office revenue even bigger than Windows already? Does it make sense for MS to leave that much money on the table in the hope of protecting Windows, while leaving openings to competitors in light office apps? Google and Apple are not sitting idle and there are already many third party iOS apps providing better sketching and diagramming capabilities than MS has ever done on WIndows. I guess these are more suitable for touch environments, but nonetheless bricks falling off your wall is never good news… Soon, it will not be all that unthinkable for small companies and students to use non-MS apps and stop caring about compatibility. Can you imagine what would happen if, let’s say, Facebook came up with a collaborative, user friendly word processor on iPads for K-12 students to write school reports without MS Office as a competitor?
windsorr
November 9, 2012 at 2:02 pm
This will all become relevant when the OS has been commotitised to zero…thats not for a few years yet….if facebook come with a wordprocessor…great….as long as everybody strarts using it….Google docs has been around for a while aand hasnt too much of a dent…