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Microsoft Paying Apple 30-Percent Cut on In-App Office 365 Subscription Purchases

sracer said:
Your use case assumed upgrading every 4 years. Some of us have and still use Office 2003. I have and continue to install it (Office Professional 2003) on every Windows machine I own over the years without restriction. I paid less than $100 for it back then.

The subscription model works great for corporations. But for consumers, not so much. Anyone who thinks that Microsoft offers the subscription model because it is better for consumers than a purchase model is hopelessly naive.
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I don't understand the problem here. If you are a happy using 2003, you aren't the target audience here at all. You could have purchased something a decade newer. An actual license. But you didn't. And that's fine. But again I ask, what's the problem here? You won't buy the new stuff regardless of their sales model by the sound if it.
 
ForkHandles said:
Apple won't make a whole heap of cash out of this project, 30% of no sales won't earn them a thing.
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Apple will indeed be making a little over about half what Microsoft is making on the transaction. Yet to be seen is whether this will be an ongoing revenue stream via in-app renewal or not.

That said, the availability of Office on an iPad will erase one of the largest obstacles that many people have in choosing an Apple iPad over a competing product. Combine that with the in-app purchase revenue, the App Store revenue generated from other purchases, and the likelihood of multiple repeat purchases of Apple products (the Halo Effect) and I'd say that Apple is doing just fine here.

And Microsoft really, really, really had no choice whatsoever but to do this.
 
brianvictor7 said:
30% for Apple on in-app purchases? That's pwnage. :D
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For the users yes.

Say I have something I've made that I want $100 for. I could sell it to you for that price and get what I want, but the seller wants a 30% cut, so I raise my price to $130 which is what you pay, I still get what I always wanted.

You this I lose or you the customer lose?

Work out who I'd paying apple ths 30% it's not me, it's you. I just raised my price to cover it.

I win.
 
ashwin4 said:
The Office 365 subscription is beyond stupid. Everyone hates it
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I don't. I need MS Office for my work - there is no way I can use iWork unfortunately - I have three PCs (2 OSX and 1 Windoze) and now two iPads with MS Office all of which will get the very latest versions of the s/w as they are released (even Office for Mac if MS ever update it). I therefore could install it on a further two PCs and three iPads if I wish to.

Compared to the £300++ per box and potentially the same again to upgrade every two years, the few pounds a month subscription model works very well for me.
 
I think Microsoft's strategy is not to compete directly with iWork on iPad (iWork is free, so it would be tough to compete with that). I think they just want to make their Office 365 subscription more appealing, by offering one more platform where you can use it.
 
Office 2003 was the last GOOD edition of Office

Rocko1 said:
I will continue to use Office 2003 for my PC that I got used for $17 for the rest of my life. No need to upgrade, ever.
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I really agree with you, as I dislike the ribbons on all the later editions of Office. In addition, and this is an important thing for many of us, in Word 2003 we had REAL FULL SCREEN VIEW (no bars or other limitations on the screens) - and this wonderful and very useful feature is no longer possible with later editions of Word (2007 and later). It's a real shame, especially as many now uses smaller screens, and therefore a REAL full screen view is strongly wanted/needed.
 
Jsameds said:
Use the completely free word processing/spreadsheet/presentation software that came with my iDevice indefinitely, and I own the software outright.
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Two things about that.

iWork is 'completely free' only to the extent that you own an Apple device. Once you switch, you can't use it anymore. The same is true if you only have an iPhone, but not a Mac. iWork for iCloud isn't as powerful yet to be an adequate substitute for a desktop app. In addition, iWork is still terrible when you are working with documents other than iWork documents. Once you have to use Word documents (of which the support in iWork is still disappointing) or ODT files (e.g. OpenOffice files, which are not supported at all but increasingly popular), then iWork is simply a pain. It may very well be that this is not of a concern to you or many other people, but this is, in my opinion, still a very big limitation of iWork.

The other thing is that many people overlook that you don't 'own' the apps you purchase from the App Store, unlike the iWork DVDs that you could purchase before. You are a licensee. For all practical purposes, there isn't much of a difference if you stick with Apple products and your Apple ID for all eternity, but that's pretty much the limit.

An Office subscription solves both problems. Office is the more comprehensive and compatible software and it's more platform agnostic than iWork. Other than what people here think about this licensing model, I think that this is the way forward. As someone who recently made the switch to another smartphone and who uses a Windows and Linux desktop occasionally, the limits of Apple's ecosystem are a huge inconvenience. With that I mean, the fact that Apple products often don't work that easily with other software products and the fact that you cannot just transfer your purchases to another device, is something we should leave behind. This subscription model is what makes that possible. The only negative thing is the price. I used to pay that amount for a Home package, which I used for three years. This is pretty much thrice the price.
 
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if you own a small company this office is an excelent thing for you. 5 computers and full working office for just 100$ a year is a very good deal. But if you're just a "normal human" that needs office every now and then... well in that case yes, it is expensive.
 
Just found that if we enabled "Speak Selection" in Settings, General, Accessibility, then when you select cells in Excel for iPad, the context menu will not appear and therefore many of the functions are disabled. Microsoft's documents did not mention it anywhere. How intuitive :mad:
 
r3m1 said:
Ignorance is bliss :rolleyes:
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Yeah, right, "ignorance." It's relative.

Everything I can't do with LibreOffice, I can do with Tex, Python, Inkscape, and Gimp. All free, but, as you know, you can't be "ignorant" and also be able use them. What's that you say? Too hard to learn?

Ignorance is bliss.
 
sracer said:
Your use case assumed upgrading every 4 years. Some of us have and still use Office 2003. I have and continue to install it (Office Professional 2003) on every Windows machine I own over the years without restriction. I paid less than $100 for it back then.

The subscription model works great for corporations. But for consumers, not so much. Anyone who thinks that Microsoft offers the subscription model because it is better for consumers than a purchase model is hopelessly naive.
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That's a fair case for an individual but not going to wash in an office where you have just migrated mail to exchange online and you need to use outlook. Although our clients all use open licenses and pay far more per head than the $99 per year for 5 users.
 
I was so glad that I got my Adobe Suite prior to their new subscription based Creative Cloud - and this is software I really like. I am certainly not gonna start using this payment model with microsoft.
 
ashwin4 said:
The Office 365 subscription is beyond stupid. Everyone hates it
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Nonsense. Its a bloody godsend for them with a lot of devices and the desire for Office to be on all of them. Its more than a godsend for small businesses with the exchange server that gets bundled into the package.
 
I know the subscription model is supposed to help anyone use office when they need to with a big fee but I actually think it is the nail in the coffin for office and why it will eventually fail.

If you use office in frequently you don't want to pay for a subscription, if you want to try it you don't want to have to pay when you realise you want to use it or try it.

Subscription software actually actively discourages use for anyone but user that fine the software essential to their job.

The model doesn't work and will alienate anyone on an iPad. MS is in trouble.
 
BeamWalker said:
I was so glad that I got my Adobe Suite prior to their new subscription based Creative Cloud - and this is software I really like. I am certainly not gonna start using this payment model with microsoft.
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I used to upgrade LR with every release. May not needed every release, but sometimes purchases are driven by want instead of need. :)

Now with CC I 1) always have access to the latest versions and 2) for $40/yr extra I have Photoshop thrown in as well. At $9.99/mo for LR and PS, it is simply cheaper than the old system, for me.

Once Office 2014 for Mac gets release later this year, presumably around june, I hope I can get it w/o 365. If not, I will have to make the calculations to see if it is worth it to me. But, considering the PC version is still available as suite this is unlikely.

That said, I am not opposed to the subscription model. It's a simple calculation to determine if it is a good choice for a certain package. Just be honest with yourself. If ie you tell yourself you can skip every other version, while the reality is you upgrade anyway (or vv), you're just fooling yourself.
 
Piggie said:
Say I have something I've made that I want $100 for. I could sell it to you for that price and get what I want, but the seller wants a 30% cut, so I raise my price to $130 which is what you pay, I still get what I always wanted.
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Bizarre. Do you think _any_ manufacturer in the world gets 100% of the retail price for anything? If you go to your local supermarket, anyone whose products are in there would be jumping from joy if they received 70% of the sale price. Same for any software product that you can buy in a box from a store.

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lordofthereef said:
Retailers actually make next to nothing in most software sales. We are talking single digits at best. Much less than 30%.
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You are confusing margin with profit. They need the 30% margin to pay the rent, pay for staff, and so on.
 
roadbloc said:
Nonsense. Its a bloody godsend for them with a lot of devices and the desire for Office to be on all of them. Its more than a godsend for small businesses with the exchange server that gets bundled into the package.
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There may be tiny group of people that like it, but I'd say most consumers do not want to pay a monthly subscription fee to use office. The subscription model, is awful, just look at the harsh reaction adobe got for photoshop when they went to the subscription model.
 
for personal use, the Office suite is too powerful. (who needs pivot and power pivot for personal use? :confused:)

for professional use and small businesses this is a very good solution, although I doubt the 365 subscription has a unique value compared to just buying the software.
 
JoEw said:
It needs to be reasonably priced, for example for 3 dollars a month I would pay for guaranteed IOS/OSX support along with a sweetened deal for skydive.

Basically do the opposite of Balmer and Microsoft will be fine.
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Right now the price isn't bad value but my concern is as a Mac user am I going to be left high and dry in the future as Microsoft neglect Mac users as seen by the last several half baked releases (2011 only marginally better than 2008)? If I had that assurance of Microsoft treating Office for Mac as an equal to the Windows version I'd be more than happy to pay up for a subscription.
 
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