Microsoft Could Earn Billions From Office For iOS 188
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."
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