Microsoft Could Earn Billions From Office For iOS 188
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Soulskill
from the only-if-they-knew-how-to-play-nice-with-others dept.
from the only-if-they-knew-how-to-play-nice-with-others dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft is leaving billions of dollars on the table by not porting Office to the iPad, according to a new analyst report. That analyst, Morgan Stanley's Adam Holt, believes that Office for iOS would sell to approximately 30 percent of all iPad users; priced at $60 per copy, that comes to a grand total of $2.5 billion per year — minus Apple's cut of the revenues, of course. But does Microsoft actually want Office for iOS out there? It's not necessarily in the company's best interest to rush such a platform to market, even if billions of dollars potentially hang in the balance — it's too busy pushing Office as a cloud-based, OS-agnostic platform. And Microsoft has another reason, aside from pushing the cloud version of Office, to de-emphasize the prospect of its productivity software on iOS: In a bid to draw more customers to its new hardware, Microsoft preloaded its Surface RT tablets with Office; offering the software on a rival touch-screen would take a major selling point off the table."
Again with this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA is riddled with retarded assumptions. Too many times have I seen things like "I think 30% of all people would buy it", based on muddy facts or even no facts at all. GAAAH!
Re:Again with this shit (Score:4, Funny)
about 1% would buy it... maybe they'd get more subs to office 365 or something..
but even with 1%.. if you count ios selling forever then they're losing an infinite amount of money!
Re:Again with this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Then let's consider Microsoft could actually produce office tools which make the best use of a Tablet or Smart Phone. I find their tools to be a challenge even with a keyboard and mouse - too much feature bloat.
Office apps on touch-only devices are a bad idea (Score:3)
Office-type applications will never be a good fit for tablets and smartphones. The applications are primarily used for content creation. The devices are primarily useful for content consumption, and suck at content creation in almost every conceivable way, starting with having tiny screens and having no fast, accurate way to input data.
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Apple sells more iPads than any single PC maker sells ANYTHING with Windows 7 or 8 on it. To play semantics at this point is the same as just deciding MS Office isn't going to run on Dells anymore.
There is no "business case" to avoid iOS. iOS is growing like crazy, so a SMART business is gonna figure out how to get Office to run... There are plenty of wannabe office suits on iOS now. There's a great big giant opportunity to make piles of money. $2 billion is 5%'er even in the corporate world... It shows
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Sorry, but I'm not sure what your comment has to do with mine. Did you reply to the wrong post?
Look at iWorks as a better guide? (Score:2)
the $2 billion 'estimate' is based on 30% sales to every ipad sold.. which is a bit over 120 million worldwide.
i think most ipads are used mainly as toys (games, email, browsing, chatting, facebook and twitter shit, etc), not for actual 'work'.
imho, your 1% is a little low, that 30% is way high. perhaps 10-15% of ipads in north america and europe, and other "first world" (for lack of better term) markets
To build on your point, I think looking at the sales numbers (if such can be found) on the iWorks applications from Apple would at least give a better baseline than the guess they are making. If you could make a reasonable assumption on business's adoption of Office instead, then you would have a guess based more on facts.
I have an iPad I use at work every day. I use iWorks to review documents sent to me and it does an OK job as long as long as the documents are fairly standard. Unfortunately, the default
I applaud Microsoft for this. (Score:5, Insightful)
I applaud Microsoft for this. Using Office as a stick to try to force people into buying a tablet they don't want is a much better strategy than selling Office to people who actually want to buy it.
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Businesswise, it may well be. Office on iPad could make a lot of money, true. But a successful alternative to the iPad, controlled by MS with an MS app store? That's a lot more money. If Microsoft are to rival Apple they need ever advantage they can get, and Office exclusivity is a big advantage.
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More profitable than making a tablet that people would want to buy even if Office was available on iPads?
Re:I applaud Microsoft for this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Businesswise, it may well be. Office on iPad could make a lot of money, true. But a successful alternative to the iPad, controlled by MS with an MS app store? That's a lot more money. If Microsoft are to rival Apple they need ever advantage they can get, and Office exclusivity is a big advantage.
And according to a recent /. article, if I could snare an asteroid, bring it into earth orbit and mine the sucker I'd be able to pocket $195 billion, if, if, if. Here's a few bit more supposition: Microsoft is not going to make a dent in Apple's share of the mobilem market much less Google's Android OS empire just like that ** snaps fingers **. The bigger threat is Google so another option would be to accept this reality and make tons of money backing Apple against Google by releasing MS office for iOS but not Android. That would hurt Google/Android in the enterprise market since you'd instantly have a cloud enabled Office suite that is cross platform over Windows, Windows Phone, OS x and iOS with native and web apps but not on Android. Google is the bigger threat, business is war, war creates odd alliances.
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You're trying to make sense to monkey boy. Ain't gonna happen.
If it doesn't have a start button, it doesn't work. Look at the damned button migrating to all Microsoft apps (that damned ribbon shit with the nice shiny big round button). Hell, they love that shit so much they made it take over the entire screen with Windows 8!!!
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That's the mindset, but it doesn't work that way. The rest of the tablet ecosystem makes documents that work together, outsells Windows laptops, and is growing fast while another failed MS tablet adds a reason to avoid MS Office on Windows desktops. De-Facto standards aren't guarantees, see: DBase & Lotus products.
Re:Again with this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Sixty dollars per copy. By Deus! It's full of nonsense.
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...And then you disappear into the void :)
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Why are you including the OS X iWork apps in your figures? This article is just about a potential iOS version of Office. If you want to include OS X apps, then you have to include Office for Mac, which costs a minimum of $90 by itself.
For the record, though, I think that $60 would be a reasonable price, so long as it has full compatibility and the majority of Office's desktop features.
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Not saying it should be free or $1, but that's way out of the tablet software price range. And it probably won't be feature equivalent with the desktop one.
MS's rumoured plan to give it away a part of Office 365 subs makes sense. Remove that sticker shock.
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TFA is riddled with retarded assumptions. Too many times have I seen things like "I think 30% of all people would buy it", based on muddy facts or even no facts at all. GAAAH!
Not only that, but the article positively reeks of Apple fanboism. That said, yes, I do have Apple hardware but it is strictly utilitarian. I don't believe any one technology is superior to the other. Surface, Android, and iPad have upsides and downsides. For me, the decision came down to the accuracy of the on-screen keyboard and Apple won that battle. The trade off for having a keyboard well suited to my fingers is a locked down, walled garden. For others, this is not as important.
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As far as iPad goes, MS Office for iPad would just be a profit center for Apple(30%? of sale price goes to Apple) and would solidify the iPad as The Tablet, something that MS clearly does not want to happen given
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Do 30% of desktop users even buy Office? I can't remember the last time I saw a home computer with it on, instead of Open/Libre Office or whatever kludge comes preinstalled with an OEM Windows install. I'd guess that the number of desktops and laptops with Office installed is roughly identical to the number of machines used for business purposes, plus the number of people who are easily talked around by the salesman with a special offer in Currys.
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...Or those who pirate it :)
But I get your point though, here we're talking about legally installed suites, and yes, you're right.
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Well, they say that 89% of statistics are pulled out of somebody's ass.
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Proactive respose (Score:5, Funny)
Surely the proactive response is to market the current generation product, while synergising a coordinated strategy towards pushing market share towards the new market paradigm?
I just gagged a little writing that.
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wonder no more.
Broken anyway (Score:2, Troll)
I have to say, the more they update and revise Office, the more broken it seems.
Wouldn't it be nice if they fixed bugs and made it work better with each iteration, instead of worse?
Why is it that iOS users would buy Office? (Score:3)
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I've read that they basically intend to give it away with Office 365, rather than sell it as a set of standalone apps.
Re:Why is it that iOS users would buy Office? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm on Android, which offers several quite good Office suites as well, and use MS Office for work. 2 main issues with the Android office suites, probably the same as on iOS:
1- Features. I'm always missing something such as style sheets, smart headers/footers, outline mode, ... let alone macros which I don't use that much
2- Compatibility. Importing/exporting files always results in a few issues, not only for unsupported features of course, but also for supported ones that are just a bit off. As soon as you need to shuttle docs back and fort between true MS Office and some clone, headaches happen. Unluckily, the clones don't have a Windows version.
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I think that's a problem Microsoft may have run into by waiting to release on iOS version of Office (if they ever do): some have learned that they don't need Office at all. In our household the one machine with Office is the Windows laptop my wife uses for work. Everything else gets done in Apple's iWork on either a Mac or iOS device. We own several copies of Office for Mac, but I eventually just quit installing it on new machines. We get along just fine.
The inertia of businesses is the only decent-sized ma
Magic numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't we just have a "Magic Numbers" article yesterday about how much OO is worth?
Think of the planet .. recycle the comments from the previous article:
OpenOffice: Worth $21 Million Per Day, If It Were Microsoft Office [slashdot.org]
Dads one question (Score:2)
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Why can't I get office for iPad.
Who'd seriously want to use Office without a keyboard?
There are plenty of ways to read or display Office documents, charts, etc on iPads without having Office itself.
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he just wants it.
Well, that pretty much shuts down any rational debate.
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You can use a keyboard with a ipad, but the combination may negate some of the ipad's form factor.
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It has superb ergonomics for certain things--mostly relating to web browsing. I don't need a laptop. I have a desktop, with two screens. It's getting old, but I'm not sure that I'll replace it with a laptop.
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so that they can sell their metro ui crablet.
with the perk that it has office.
non-metro office.
Balmer must go (Score:2, Troll)
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Actual stock price comparisons (Score:3)
In context to your quotes by the measure of a CEO its share value, Ballmer is doing an awful lot better than Cook
Have you actually looked at the stocks? Apple [google.com] has gone from $7.50 in 2003 to over $464 at the time I write this. Microsoft's [google.com] stock over the same period is essentially unchanged. It was around $25 in 2003 and still is. Cook has been in charge for roughly one year [google.com] and the stock had a huge run up during that time but is now basically back to where it was when he started as CEO.
Frankly Tim Cook hasn't been on the job long enough to really tell how he is doing. We'll have a better idea in another year. Bal
What has your comments to do with mine (Score:2)
Frankly Tim Cook hasn't been on the job long enough to really tell how he is doing
Apples shares have been in freefall from 705 to 450...and that is under Tim Cook...and his response to this has been *nothing*..Shares rose under Elop too...for a few months. The reality is you might want Cook to catch his breath settle in, but right now Apple is burning. Shareholders are calling for Tim Cook to do something with those Billions, the reality is it might be a little late.
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Didn't you prove his point? Tim Cook got the position when the stock value was very high. Some would argue insanely too high. He's only been in charge for a year. Ballmer has been at the helm of MS for 10 years in which the stock hasn't really moved.
The reality is you might want Cook to catch his breath settle in, but right now Apple is burning.
Yes because in the other last earnings report, Apple lost billions and failed to sell any products . . . no wait the opposite happened. It's because of impatient and shortsighted investors that expect every company to earn 30x what they did before. They ar
Timmy not stopping Apples Slump (Score:2)
There is a different between, maintaining share price over 10 years ...and losing 35% of its value in 3 months. Those profits are already accounted for in its current share price. The reality is Apple is slowing http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130214005415/en/Android-iOS-Combinid [businesswire.com]. And Timmy the highest paid CEO in the world, and has done *nothing*.
The reality is your arguing Apple is just another electronics company now...and I agree wholeheartedly.
Cloud v. Native (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's what we were promised, but I had to shell out money for the client platform.
Locked Ecosystem (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, porting Office to iOS would potentially reduce the sale of Microsoft Surface. I reckon Microsoft want to have a firmer control of their users.
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This is economically stupid though. Office is about half of MS in terms of profit. Damaging their Office business just to support selling Surface (which seem to not sell that good anyway) would be totally silly. And for Windows the writing is on the wall anyway. They won't ever get back into those good old 95% of the market times.
MS should have come with MS Office for Android and iOS long ago. THIS market still is solidly in their hands.
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Well, porting Office to iOS would potentially reduce the sale of Microsoft Surface. I reckon Microsoft want to have a firmer control of their users.
Ya, but if someone's gonna eat your lunch, it might as well be you.
Full of assumptions... (Score:5, Informative)
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I'd pay $10 for MS Office for a mobile device if it contained Word, Excel and PowerPoint because that's what I see a lot of other full fledged office suites going for. I might even go in for $15 but I would have to consider it. $20 would be an absolute maximum unless I was using it very heavily every day.
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I don't know many people that would pay $30 for them when I can get another suite that's compatible for less money. Software, like most things, is only worth what people are willing to pay.
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A lot of business customers would buy the official MS Office app because none of the alternatives are 100% compatible. 95% maybe, but they often lack important features like change tracking that businesses make extensive use of. The cost of the app is far less than the cost of wasted time dealing with incompatibilities and limitations.
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I think Microsoft would want to use Office as a asset to get Surface in the enterprise.
Alternately, they could just drop Surface and probably make more in the process. I think going OS and hardware agnostic is probably the best for them long term. It'll mean that they have to acknowledge that they're going to take a big drop in profit though. That'll hurt their near future stock price more than pretending that they have a viable business model for the next ten years.
iOS is not a good platform for keyboard programs (Score:2)
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Just wanted to also add that if the task is only going to take a few minutes, it seems really hard justifying the $60 pricetag for something you are only going to use for "just a few minutes." And if you had lots and lots of tasks that each only take "just a few minutes" then wouldn't you be better off using "the real deal" (i.e. an actual computer with the full application suite)?
Sometimes I prefer to travel light. Lets say a 5 hour flight. If I am only going to work on documentation and not do any coding I may prefer an iPad plus Bluetooth keyboard over a laptop. Lets say its just a lunch time meeting where I had only planed on presenting info but the other party would like to make a small change (or I had noticed a small error), I may prefer only the iPad and just use the onscreen keyboard. It all depends on the job at hand, different tools for different jobs.
I think Porting to Metro would be higher priority. (Score:2)
Let's revisit after they have a port for their own mobile GUI, before we start thinking they are going to port to Apple (or are holding back doing so).
Such a port to a radically different GUI paradigms is going to be a major re-write. It will take years. It isn't simple a case of recompile for new architecture.
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Why bother? (Score:2)
I predict the iPad (and all tablets for that matter) are little more than a fad. I know people who bought them(iPad as well as Samsung Galaxy). They were a fun toy for a couple of weeks and now they collect dust (except for when the kids play an occasional game). These same people who bought them are back to using their laptops and full-sized PCs. The rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
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More importantly, when the full-OS (or rather the dual/touch aware full-OS) tablets come out, and you no longer have to buy two devices - a tablet for consumption and a laptop for heavier work - the tablets will decline in value. Their advantage is a 1.5lb screen-only device that is quick and easy for small tasks. Now that full intel tablets are going into sub 2lb territory, the only thing left is the App market for full/dual OS (like Metro) and the longer battery life. The former will get fixed with time a
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I have been using a galaxy note 10.1 for a couple weeks and that's really useful in my job. Reading and annotating articles on it is a breeze. I can easily provide annotations simply for collaborators on the other side of the world (or just not in their office right now) without having to print the document, annotate it on paper, scan it and send it back by email.
It is definitively useful to me. Of course, reading, writing and annotating takes a significant portion of my time. I understand it might not be e
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Your observations do not reflect mine. I've stopped taking my laptop to and from work because I find that the tasks I want to do at home (browsing, email, and streaming video) are better suited to the iPad. I'd much rather wake the iPad (near-instant) than use the laptop which takes more than two seconds to wake from sleep (first-world problems). The iPad is far less awkward to use in a casual setting like a couch or big, comfy chair and is more comfortable to read on, too (I have several digital magazine s
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I predict the iPad (and all tablets for that matter) are little more than a fad. I know people who bought them(iPad as well as Samsung Galaxy). They were a fun toy for a couple of weeks and now they collect dust (except for when the kids play an occasional game). These same people who bought them are back to using their laptops and full-sized PCs. The rumors of their demise have been greatly exaggerated.
If laptops get their bulk down to tablet-level and their battery life up to tablet-level, then maybe. Laptop battery life is roughly the same and possibly worse than it was 20 years ago, though, not better (granted, the laptops have much better displays and cpu power these days - but it ate up all of the advances in battery tech).
When I spend an entire day in meetings with sub-teams on a large project, I can carry only my tablet from meeting room to meeting room, use up less than half the battery during th
It breaks MS commandment #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
This would violate MS commandment #1; Thou shalt never do anything that could threaten the MS desktop monopoly.
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Except for that one time they "had" to invest $150 million in Apple ...
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/ [wired.com]
I'm sure many would buy it (Score:2)
Off by a few factors? (Score:2)
Some idiot thought all our management needed iPads, one month later and 90% of the managers don't even touch the device while at work. It's not a productivity tool and a high priced productivity app is not going to be popular when everyone already has laptops with full features and function.
Nonsense (Score:2)
No, they are not leaving money on the table.
Claiming that selling office for iOS would bring them more profit ignores all the side-effects and especially that the only reason MS is as rich as they are is monopoly rent.
Basically, they are drug dealers who would NOT profit from selling their customers a "brew at home" kit, even though such a thing might seem like a great idea with massive revenue potential.
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Tell MS we don't want it (Score:2)
Microsoft Office as "productivity software" LOL (Score:2)
Calling Microsoft Office "productivity software" is hilarious. I know we've all spent hours trying to do the simplest things with Office. I recently spent nine hours including querying a forum and Googling trying to figure out how to get Word to number equations. Nine hours, and all I got was a clumsy work-around. And I know this is the "right answer" and that I didn't miss something.
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I've been using Open Office / Libre Office for at least 5 years now. It does more than I would ever need it to. Honestly... it has too much. So I don't see how there's even a market anymore for Microsoft Office, cloud or not.
A lot of people can certainly use OpenOffice and any of its derivatives, but a lot is still using Microsoft Office. It's also very popular in businesses, often in connection with other Microsoft products like Microsoft Sharepoint. Microsoft Outlook and Exchange alone is a big reasons why businesses stay with Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office is far away from dying, it's not even close. And truth be told Microsoft Office is certainly not a bad product. It works seemingly well and has a decent price.
Microsoft Office is Overpriced (Score:5, Informative)
I had a little look at what office would cost me. £220($340) for the crippled version £389.99($605) for the full version. I have used LibreOffice(originally openoffice) and it even has advantages over Microsoft Office its not just bad value. Its insanely overpriced.
Pound foolish. (Score:2)
I had a little look at what office would cost me. $340 for the crippled version $605 for the full version.
The geek always quotes retail list for the most expensive version of Office he can find. The odds are quite good, of course, that he qualifies for the academic or professional discount.
If his employer supports Microsoft's Home Use Program, MS Office Pro 2013 is his for $10 US.
If he is a graduate or undergraduate student, Office 365 University 2013 costs $80 for a four year - renewable - subscription.
I'll ignore for the moment, the campus the wide agreement, programs like DreamSpark and so on.
The high e
Lets get a few things right. (Score:2)
The geek always quotes retail list for the most expensive version of Office he can find.
Lets get a few things right. I've never been a geek, and only ever seen that word used by bullies. The price is for the version I am eligible. Just because other people are entitled to discounts in educational for Microsoft self serving reasons does not mean I am. I personally have had no problems using LibreOffice...but them its pretty similar to every other office product ever.
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Outlook + Exchange + Active-sync is the big ticket. i want someone to please show me a true drop in replacement that doesn't cost nearly the same amount.
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Active-sync from 1996 so you can interface with your other MS devices? There are many options, collectively called "Groupware".
Cheaper:
Take Zimbra: Android client means no active-sync. It does email, webmail, calendaring & scheduling. It has a desktop application for the 3 big OS families.
Better-support:
Lotus Notes & Domino. It's more expandable, the server is faster than Exchange, multiple clients are available (though only web mobile).
True?
None tie as deeply to Active Directory, Windows policies,
Re:People still buy Office? (Score:5, Interesting)
We just switched from Open Office to MS Office 2010.
1 - It's generally more user-friendly for the tasks most of our users need to do
2 - It looks better, the interface is more aesthetic (surprisingly important when dealing with non-technical users)
3 - Easier to push out updates
4 - Better compatibility with outside vendors
5 - Better support
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Better compatibility with outside vendors
This is utterly frustrating and totally true. I think having to purchase a ridiculously overpriced software in order to usefully send documents to each other is against humanity and detrimental to society. We should all be using an open format for documents - especially for future compatibility. Pages for Mac is exactly like this, too. :( I'm surprised this is not the number one reason you've moved to MSOffice though.
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Business is still the big market. No manager wants to risk their big presentation on having not-quite-perfect compatibility, so everyone making really important documents wants Microsoft Office. That means everyone else in the company needs Microsoft Office too, so they're all compatible and nobody's at risk of being "the guy who broke it".
As long as businesses send documents, they'll want their precious real-deal software to work on them. That lock-in is Microsoft's cash cow. Sure, the minor differences li
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MS Office, as well as other critical windows only software, is one of the main things keeping about 20-30% of my IT budget going to Microsoft. If I could add an iPad or macbook to the domain and install outlook on it I'd have a lot of users demanding to work that way; no doubt.
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ehhhhh..... You can add a MacBook to the domain and install Outlook on it.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/outlook [microsoft.com]
Group Policy even works.
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It does more than I would ever need it to. Honestly... it has too much. So I don't see how there's even a market anymore for Microsoft Office, cloud or not.
Microsoft positions the MS Office suite as part of an integrated office system that scales to an enterprise of any size. with solutions for the client, the server and the web.
Microsoft Office 365 for Health Organizations [microsoft.com]
It's a given that the small business accounting program and any other productivity app or resource the clerical worker or professional needs will integrate smoothly into the MS Office environment.
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I've been using Open Office / Libre Office for at least 5 years now. It does more than I would ever need it to. Honestly... it has too much. So I don't see how there's even a market anymore for Microsoft Office, cloud or not.
I can see why you'd say that but, believe it or not, some of us have IT departments larger than our mom's basement.
Has "mom's basement" replaced "Library of Congresses" as the Slashdot standard unit of measure (SSUoM)?
Here's one datapoint: my last company had an IT department about the size of my mom's basement to support 1000 users. And we're using MS Office - almost half the company is on Mac's and they use MS Office too.
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Are you not familiar with iWork? (Numbers, Keynote, Pages)
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Are you not familiar with iWork? (Numbers, Keynote, Pages)
You missed the keyword: good. I own all three, and Keynote is the only one that's worth anything. I use Numbers to update spreadsheets I want to have on my iPhone because of iCloud functionality, but I'd never use it for anything important.
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There you go. Apple tried and failed.