Why Microsoft Office For iOS Will Likely Never See the Light of Day

MojoKid writes "It has been over six years since Apple introduced the iPhone. Millions of apps have been written for the platform in that time, with collective downloads into the billions. Apple's App Store is a thriving marketplace with a huge amount of software available, except Microsoft Office. There's a version of Office for iOS supposedly in the works, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer threw cold water on the idea when asked about upcoming events for the Office suite after launching the new Office 2013 / Office 365 products earlier this week. Revenue sharing is reportedly a major sticking point. Microsoft is trying to push people towards yearly subscriptions with Office 2013 and Office 365, but Apple requires a 30 percent profit share on sales of any app in their store. Microsoft reportedly isn't thrilled at the idea of sharing that much revenue. It's ironic — when Bill Gates agreed to port Office to the Mac nearly 20 years ago, it was seen as a lifeline for the beleaguered manufacturer. Now, Microsoft is knocking on the door of Apple's business and Cupertino seems disinclined to answer."

Comments

wtf

[yincrash]

It's ironic — when Bill Gates agreed to port Office to the Mac nearly 20 years ago, it was seen as a lifeline for the beleaguered manufacturer. Now, Microsoft is knocking on the door of Apple's business and Cupertino seems disinclined to answer.

This conclusion absolutely does not follow from the sentence that came before it.

Re:wtf

[amiga3D]

The reason Bill Gates agreed to port Office to the Mac wasn't altruism. He was at the time trying to fight off the Justice Departments charges of abusing their monopoly. Porting Office was one way to show they weren't really a big bad evil that refused to play nice.

Re:wtf

[mfnickster]

Each version of Word was ported to Windows from the Mac until the much-maligned 5.0 version when they tried to reverse it and failed badly.

I think you mean Word 6.0 for Mac, which was ungodly slow on most machines. Word 5.1 was highly regarded as the last "good version" of Word on the Mac for many years.

Re:wtf

[tverbeek]

They never "ported" Office to the Mac; it was already there. Excel was born on the Mac, and Word for Mac was one of the early apps to legitimize it as a platform (when Windows was still a questionable alternative). What happened years later was MS promising to continue Office:Mac (and IE for Mac), a deal that gave the then-faltering Mac a safer future, and gave MS cover from abuse-of- monopoly accusations.

Re:wtf

[Dogtanian]

That sounds like an anti-Apple conclusion, in that it makes Apple look like a bunch of ungrateful backstabbing assholes. "Yeah, thanks for saving our bacon 20 years ago. If it weren't for you, we'd be dead by now. Now, kindly fuck off and die so we can get busy pissing on your grave."

Not to sound like I'm defending Apple (who I'm really not a fan of these days), but despite Gates' attempt to repaint himself as Mr. Charity Benefactor, MS were always a bunch of predatory, bullying, market-share-exploiting assholes who only did what was in their own self interest. In this case, it was in their interest to have a token (and very distant second-place) "competitor", without which they would have more obviously been a monopoly and at risk from regulatory action (and even a possible forced spit).

If it had been in their interest to do so, I'm entirely confident they would have let Apple go to the wall in a heartbeat.

Re:wtf

[KingMotley]

Yes it does. The "It's ironic" at the beginning of the quote ties the two statements together as if they are comparing to nearly identical situations. The first sentence is talking about how back when Apple was hurting and about to go out of business, Microsoft saved them by porting office to their platform. The second sentence now has to be ironic is some sense as it relates to the first. The implication is that the roles are now reversed and Apple has taken a completely different stance from what Microsoft did in the opposite situation, making it an ironic.

There are ways around it

[hsmith]

MS isn't being creative enough is what it sounds like.

Offer the ability to create / edit documents via a free MS Office suite on the iDevice.

Offer a subscription service to be able to save/open those files off the device.

Apple isn't forcing Netflix to hand over 30% of their revenue, because they give up the App for free.

But boo hoo, MS has to pay what everyone else does to Apple for the service.

OpenOffice/LibreOffice

[ewieling]

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for OpenOffice or LibreOffice to be ported to iOS.

Re:also why other pro apps will not be in other ap

[bmo]

The mark-up for selling a bicycle and bike parts is 40 percent.
Clothing is 100 percent.

A 30% cut of the retail price is probably lower than brick-and-mortar. Do you honestly think that Microsoft gets the full $300 you pay for Windows 7 Pro from Fry's?

--
BMO

Re:Obvious.

[Sarten-X]

It'll need extensive tweaking for each browser to manage such a complicated interface, but MS can manage that.

Right, just like OWA works fully on all browsers. After all, it's been out for a decade already and it's been redesigned several times...

Microsoft will never even try to "manage that", because it goes against Microsoft's core business model. While most companies accept that customers want tools that do the job well, Microsoft only makes tools that do the job well only when paired with other Microsoft products. This is why the term "Microsoft shop" is so much more common than an equivalent "Adobe shop" or "Oracle shop", or even an "Apple shop" - at least when referring to more than a single tool.

Despite Apple's alarming growth and nasty business tactics, I just can's seem to gather as much hatred for them as I can for Microsoft. Apple's tools are smooth. My iPad will easily work with anything else, whether it's connecting to OS X, Windows, or Linux (though Linux has some issues still). Using iTunes on Windows doesn't leave me looking for missing features, like I usually do when trying to use OWA from Chrome.

On the other hand, I expect that Office will never have an iOS app or a full WebKit-compatible interface. Microsoft can still bring its monopoly power to bear, and use its Office market share to promote its floundering Surface tablets. Some companies (probably including my current employer) will be interested in using tablets, but they need Office more than they need any feature of iOS, so they'll buy Surface tablets out of necessity, not choice.

Office documents are the last monopoly Microsoft has. Even its hold on the desktop OS market is breaking, as alternatives are becoming more viable with every new OS-agnostic cloud offering. Since Microsoft's main tactic has been to use its monopolies to force ancillary products on customers who just want things to work, I think we'll soon be seeing more extra "features" dropped into each new version of Office, just to force competitors to waste resources and maintain the all-important market share.

Surface

[iceborer]

If you put Office on the iPad, the only real reason to buy Surface goes away.