- Apr 24, 2013
- 1,200
Microsoft Office is at last coming to the iPad, marking an important step for the software giant as it races to catch up with the move to mobile. Microsoft general manager Julia White said that as of 11am Pacific Time on Thursday, key Office programs Word, Excel and PowerPoint would be available on the App Store for the iPad.
Microsoft’s popular email application, Outlook, was notably absent from the list of available programs. The apps are free but users will require a subscription to Microsoft’s Office 365 service to use them.
The announcement marked a move away from Microsoft’s policies under Steve Ballmer to keep software services locked to Windows devices. New CEO Satya Nadella took the stage for the first time at a press event in San Francisco, saying Microsoft wanted to ”empower people to be productive and do more across all devices… Office 365 will be everywhere from here on out.”
Microsoft had earlier invited press to an event to hear “some news related to the intersection of cloud and mobile.”
Outlook’s absence isn’t a major drawback, Forrester analyst Rob Koplowitz argued, since anyone on Microsoft Exchange could still use Apple’s Mail client. “The big problem has been ‘I want to edit my documents in Word,’” he said. “I want to edit it in the native application. I don’t want to pull it into something else.”
Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/03/27/microsoft-finally-brings-office-to-the-ipad/
Microsoft’s popular email application, Outlook, was notably absent from the list of available programs. The apps are free but users will require a subscription to Microsoft’s Office 365 service to use them.
The announcement marked a move away from Microsoft’s policies under Steve Ballmer to keep software services locked to Windows devices. New CEO Satya Nadella took the stage for the first time at a press event in San Francisco, saying Microsoft wanted to ”empower people to be productive and do more across all devices… Office 365 will be everywhere from here on out.”
Microsoft had earlier invited press to an event to hear “some news related to the intersection of cloud and mobile.”
Outlook’s absence isn’t a major drawback, Forrester analyst Rob Koplowitz argued, since anyone on Microsoft Exchange could still use Apple’s Mail client. “The big problem has been ‘I want to edit my documents in Word,’” he said. “I want to edit it in the native application. I don’t want to pull it into something else.”
Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/03/27/microsoft-finally-brings-office-to-the-ipad/
