The iPad have been hugely successful, significantly more so than other tablets released before it, and is carving out a market for tablets. Obviously it's not it's included keyboard that has been responsible for it's success, it seems to me like a strong indicator that a keyboard or a more desktop like OS is not what the market wants.
iPad has been successful, yes. Hardly hugely successful though. Relative everyone else, sure, but given the lack of competition that says little. (and if it wasnt clear, i am talking enterprise now). Tablets themselves are cheap. Dead cheap. The thing holding massive deployment back are sufficient use cases. Evidently - and correct or not - iPad has not been able to provide that (in the eyes of Big-IT).
Sure, but do people use their tablets for that task? Up until now, not at all since Office has not been available. Office is one application, so much more exist that are important, client software to company services, CRM, inventory data bases etc etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes Office may be important, but there are already tools available that does Office. A tablet brings nothing new in that regard, except a lesser typing experience.
If Big-IT tell them too, yes, they do. Lets face it, BYOD is a fad (Big-IT hates it and devices are cheap, regardless) and in the end, there is very little end-user control.
As for the rest, if MSFT can sell W8-tablets on Office, all others will follow. Two-sided markets work like that. Build it (i.e., the userbase) and they (i.e., developers) will come, so to speak. And no, no other tool does Office. Word processing? Yes. Presentations? Yes. Spreadsheets? Yes. But Office strength lies in its de facto standard. If not for that, I am sure that we would have had way better software solutions out there than what we currently have.
(Unless you meant tools as in other computing devices. And for that my answer is twice the devices = twice the maintenance = twice the agony for Big-IT... not counting that the devices themselves cost money).
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You think Apple cares whether iWork is better than Office? I think they'd prefer very much not to have to build a suite of products that duplicates some/most of the functionality of Office. They build software so their hardware products have something to run, it's why they built the OS, otherwise their devices are mere door stops or useless desk accessories which look quite pretty.
If Microsoft were truly to commit to building a top of the line product for Apple products (both OS X and iOS), I'm sure Apple would be happy to let them take the top spot - it only makes their hardware more valuable. But, Microsoft will never do that, it'd give people yet another reason to walk away from Windows, which is why the Apple version(s) of Office will *always* pale in comparison to the Windows version.
So, Apple will continue to step up to the plate and offer iWork as a substitute, so users will *always* have a suite of office products that perform ~80% of the functionality of Office (covering about 95% of all users' needs) to use on Apple hardware.
Honestly doubt that MSFT has held back Office for Mac for strategic reasons. Economic, perhaps, but that is a different matter. What reason have they had to in the end? Should also remember why MSFT started developing for Apple to begin with (was hardly out of the kindness of Bill G's (massive) heart).