There have been a lot of rumours recently about Microsoft launching a version of Office for the iPad. I doubt it - it would amount to a pre-admission of the failure of Windows 8 on tablets. It’s not really essential either, as there are a number of good Office-compatible applications and suites that are already available for …

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Thursday 26th April 2012 11:05 GMT hitmouse

weird logic

"Office for the iPad ... would amount to a pre-admission of the failure of Windows 8 on tablets."

And iTunes on PCs is an admission of its failure on Macs, ... oh wait...

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1. Thursday 26th April 2012 11:22 GMT Chris 3
  
  Re: weird logic
  
  I think it is fair to say that the availability of of Office on Windows 8 tablets could be unique selling point that would significantly boost sales of Win 8 tablets.
  
  By comparison, I'm not sure that iTunes availability was ever a very important factor in people buying Mac. And Apple was more interested in removing barriers to people buying iPods and promoting music sales on as many platforms as possible.
  
  But yes, there was a bit of shock and mutterings about betrayal amongst the Macmaffia at the time, IIRC.
  
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2. Thursday 26th April 2012 11:31 GMT JDX
  
  Re: weird logic
  
  And Office for Mac too...
  
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3. Thursday 26th April 2012 20:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Re: weird logic
  
  Yeah, selling office licenses to another x hundred million customers would be a right failure. Where do the reg get these hopeless journalists from?
  
  And this service may be free, but I cannot see how the license model would work so I would expect it to last about 10 minutes.
  
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Thursday 26th April 2012 12:20 GMT Silverburn

re: powerpoint pic

Wow...is it legal to have that much wood for powerpoint...?

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Thursday 26th April 2012 22:42 GMT Arctic fox

Pre-admission of failure? No, marketing.

Microsoft think that having a free-version of Office on Windows RT (ARM version) will be a killer app as far as selling that version of Win8 is concerned. Whether they are right or wrong about that it is not difficult to see that porting it to the big tablet rival would not be the smartest move they could make.

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1. Friday 27th April 2012 08:24 GMT hitmouse
  
  Re: Pre-admission of failure? No, marketing.
  
  Better that customers have *your* free version than the competitors' - remove drift to Google Docs or similar, not to mention service the huge Office client sites where iPads are used in conjunction with SharePoint and other server licenses.
  
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  1. Friday 27th April 2012 13:45 GMT Arctic fox
    
    @hitmouse: I take your point and I have to admit...........
    
    ............that I would not care to be the senior manager at Redmond charged with that particular judgement call. However, that is the point really is it not? Where is the balance of advantage contra disadvantage? To be quite honest I do not have any certain opinion here and am just glad that I do not have responsibility for that kind of decision. -:)
    
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    1. Friday 27th April 2012 14:22 GMT hitmouse
      
      Re: @hitmouse: I take your point and I have to admit...........
      
      It's happened so many times before such as with Oracle pouring money into OpenOffice for which it didn't get a cent, but at least it hit Microsoft and perhaps reduced likelihood of adopting SQL Server.
      
      I've also spoken to technical reps in countries where software pirating is rife - they explain that their job is to make sure it's their company's software that is used and not another's, because as soon as the country tightens up its regulations, then people will pay to upgrade what they already have.
      
      Exactly where a company gets its revenue is not important, as long as they're getting some and their competitors aren't.
      
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