Microsoft Could Earn Billions From Office For iOS

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."

Comments

Again with this shit

[war4peace]

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

[Sockatume]

Sixty dollars per copy. By Deus! It's full of nonsense.

Re:Again with this shit

[ackthpt]

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.

Proactive respose

[Dexter Herbivore]

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.

Magic numbers

[OzPeter]

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

I applaud Microsoft for this.

[Joce640k]

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.

Full of assumptions...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

One of them is that someone would pay $60 for an iOS version of Microsoft office when there are capable software better suited for the iPad for around $10 per application and they are compatible with Office. Microsoft knows this and wisely licenses its file API instead of diminishing their brand.

Re:People still buy Office?

[SJHillman]

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

Microsoft Office is Overpriced

[tuppe666]

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.

It breaks MS commandment #1

[h4rr4r]

This would violate MS commandment #1; Thou shalt never do anything that could threaten the MS desktop monopoly.