Microsoft Office For iPad To Be Released Soon
If you own an iPad and you want or you need an office suit, you will likely find quite a few. However, none of them compare to Microsoft Office. There have been lots of rumors that hinted that Microsoft is planning to bring its Office suite to the iPad and to Android based tablets, but we had only the rumors. However, unnamed sources told Mary Jo Foley (from ZDNet) that Microsoft Office could arrive on the iPad “sooner than most think“. It seems that the codename for the iPad version of Microsoft Office is “Miramar” and it could be released even before Microsoft’s touch first Office (which is apparently codenamed “Gemini“).
Microsoft officials already confirmed (albeit indirectly) that Microsoft Office will be released for the iPad. The last one to confirm it was Microsoft’s ex CEO Steve Ballmer who mentioned that Microsoft Office for the iPad would be released after the “Gemini” version of Microsoft Office. However, that was quite some time ago and sicne then there was only silence; recently ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley had this to say: “But I hear Ballmer and the senior leaders of the company may have had a change of heart towards the end of last year. According to one of my contacts, Ballmer OK’d the suggestion by the Office team that they’d bring Office for iPad to market as soon as it was ready, even though that would likely mean before the Windows 8 version. I’m hearing that new date for Office for iPad is some time in the first half of calendar 2014. (My sources last summer were hearing Office for iPad wouldn’t debut until Fall 2014)“.
ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley also notes that while she is not certain of whether Microsoft Office for the iPad is a real fully functional Office standalone app (or suite of apps) or whether users are going to need a subscription, she says she heard that Microsoft Office for the iPad is “likely to require some kind of Office 365 subscription (either corporate or Home Premium, depending on the use case)“. Mary Jo Foley is also convinced that Microsoft Office for the iPad will save files to Microsoft’s OneDrive (which was officially released as Microsoft SkyDrive, but will soon be renamed to OneDrive following a lawsuit from the British television broadcaster BSkyB over the use of the word “Sky“) cloud storage, or OneDrive for Business, but she says that users will also be able to save their files on the iPad’s own memory.
Microsoft already offers Microsoft Office Mobile for the iPhone through Office 365 licensing program. Microsoft Office Mobile integrates with OneDrive, so all documents are saved to Microsoft’s cloud storage. However, Microsoft Office Mobile offers limited editing capabilities compared to the desktop Microsoft Office suite. Considering that Microsoft Office Mobile is available on both Android and iOS via an Office 365 subscription, it is not hard to imagine that Microsoft Office for the iPad will follow the same model. Without surprising anyone, Microsoft officials did not want to comment on the subject of Microsoft Office arriving on the iPad, but even so ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley seems pretty convinced that it will come and sooner rather than later.
However, there is a very interesting question some users have asked themselves in regards to the much rumored Microsoft office for the iPad suite and that question is: is it really worth it anymore? Apple has its own office suite: iWork and last year, on October 22nd, Apple announced that all iOS devices purchased from September 2013 onward whether new or refurbished, will get a free download of all three iWork apps. For most iOS users iWork is good enough, not to mention there are no subscription fees: as we mentioned it is a free download and it only requires a free iCloud account to sync. That said, will iPad users pay the extra money for Microsoft Office for the iPad? To justify the extra money (over Apple’s own office suite, iWork, which is free) Microsoft Office for the iPad will have to offer a very good experience, comparable to that of the desktop Microsoft Office suite, not to the Microsoft Office Mobile. At this point it seems that Microsoft is a bit late to the party. We would like what you think about the upcoming Microsoft Office for the iPad. Would you get it? As always, leave a comment in the dedicated section below.
