Microsoft Office For iPad To Be Unveiled On March 27
Last month we reported that unnamed sources told Mary Jo Foley (from ZDNet) that Microsoft Office (codenamed “Miramar”) could arrive on the iPad “sooner than most think“. If you own an iPad there are quite a few options in regards to an office suit, but none of them compares to Microsoft Office. The latest rumors suggest that during Satya Nadella’s first media event, cloud and mobile focused, that will be held in San Francisco, three days from now, on March 27, the Microsoft Office suite for the iPad will be unveiled and released.
Microsoft already offers Microsoft Office Mobile for the iPhone, since June 2013, through the 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. It seems that just like Microsoft Office Mobile for the iPhone, the Microsoft Office for iPad will via an Office 365 subscription.
The Microsoft Office suite (which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint and support document editing and creation for all of them) was already confirmed to be released on the iPad, but some analysts have been wondering if it really worth it anymore. The question is very interesting because 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 (Apple’s own office suite). 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.
The Microsoft Office for iPad on the other hand will require an Office 365 subscription. In order to make it worth the price, over the free iWork office suite from Apple, Microsoft Office for the iPad will have to offer a very good experience, similar to that of the desktop Microsoft Office suite and we doubt that is gong to happen, as it will most likely offer the same experience as the Microsoft Office Mobile for the iPhone. Thus we too believe that Microsoft is too late with its Office suite for the iPad, as most iOS users are now probably using iWork; Microsoft Office for iPad offers too little to justify the replacement of the free iWork office suite for a suite that requires an Office 365 subscription.
At the upcoming event, which will be the first for Satya Nadella as Microsoft CEO, the company will expand on the “mobile first, cloud first” strategy, of which Microsoft Office for iPad is part of. The first step towards this strategy is the release, for free, of the OneNote Office app for Mac. We would like to know what you think about the upcoming Microsoft Office for iPad; are you going to keep using iWork or are you going to switch to Microsoft Office for iPad as soon as it becomes available? Leave your comments in the dedicated section below.
