Why Office For iPad Makes Sense

February 27th, 2012

Dan Frommer:

If Office is the only thing worth buying a Windows tablet for, no one’s going to want to buy a Windows tablet. Microsoft needs to give people many more reasons than Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to buy Windows tablets. So selling Office for the iPad shouldn’t get in the way of that. And anyway, it will be many years — if ever — before Windows tablets are selling in nearly the volume that iPads are. ”Sitting out” the iPad could actually become a real risk for Microsoft and the future of the Office business.

Yep. And Office for iPad could be a trojan horse if done right, too—make Office the standard on iOS like it is on PCs, and when Windows 8 tablets are released, that makes it a lot easier for people to switch to them. If Office isn’t necessary for these post-PC devices, it makes a lot less sense to switch to Windows 8 tablets.