Microsoft [MSFT] have announced that they are not going to be making a Microsoft Office Suite app for the Apple iPad [AAPL] as previously hinted earlier this year.
The possibility of an Office for iPad app came from a question asked to Mike Tedesco and he responded as follows...
'Yeah, it's something that we're looking at, said Microsoft Senior Product manager Mike Tedesco. 'Obviously the announcement (of the iPad) is really fresh and there's nothing to announce or nothing that I can talk to you about today.
After a few months, Microsoft are ready to talk about it, and basically... it's not happening. This is according to Stephen Elop who is the head of Microsofts business division who said point-blank that they have no plans to produce Office for iPad.
However, this of course is not set in stone as later in the businessweek article/interview this quote can be found...
'We never say never, but we have no current plans to develop a version of Office for the Apple iPad, Elop said. Last year Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said it would create a version to work on Nokia Oyj's smartphones, since millions of Office users already own those devices.
When commenting on Office 2010 and the beta version that can currently be downloaded, we learn that 6 million people have downloaded the current version vs the 3 million that downloaded Office 2007 when that was new. That's a large amount of people showing that Office is still popular. This is related to a question about Google Docs being a challenge to Microsoft. MS believe this not to be the case.
Maybe next year we'll have an announcement about Office for iPad, but as it stands I suspect they are concentrating on getting their own tablet right and will have high hopes for good sales of that device.
Via: TFTS
