Office for iOS Could See a Boost if Stephen Elop Named Microsoft CEO

[phoenixsan]

I dont think.....

MS will give up any advantage to boost sales of the Surface or any other hardware offerings. I am not seeing MS going in the mess of Slate-WebOS-HP we got a time ago.

If any,MS can do a iOS version of Office with special features for iOS or that tap in the advantages of iOS. But then, they have to compete with free (Apple offer, in the cases that apply)............

 

[MattInOz]

I work in Finance and iWork apps are actually starting to make a presence and gain a little tracking in the workplace. When sharing complex spreadsheets we still use Excel. When working on a group presentation, we use PowerPoint. At other times those who favor Macs or iPads are able to use Numbers and Keynote and more and more folks will accept these without a file conversion. Some will even email out .pdf versions of these or MS file format versions when necessary.

I think MS is missing the boat and by the time they offer Office on iOS, we will have gotten used to and implemented other solutions. office is great but it's expensive and MS is slow to offer it on the platforms most folks are moving to. I believe this is a tragic mistake.

Far more than Word, Excel was always the hook that kept business on Microsoft. I don't think it's any surprise they started slowing as databases and cloud software services really started to eat at Excels common uses.

Still there are a lot of people with a lot of valuable knowledge tied up in their own custom tweaked excel spreadsheets. Microsoft really need to defend that market to a good change post-PC.

 

[derekaw]

Can we have a poll? How many people care about MS Office on their iOS device? Is it a deal breaker? Personally I think that people don't really care about Office at all and by now anyone who needs office like functions have already found an app or a workflow that works without office.

 

[iSee]

Keeping Office off iOS is hurting Office a LOT more than it's helping Windows as a tablet OS.

It's time for them to admit that if Windows is going to succeed as a tablet OS it needs to do it on its own merits, not because it has an exclusive on Office.

Meanwhile, much of the post-PC world is learning that, yes, they can actually live without Office. One of MS's pillars of dominance has eroded. They should release Office for iOS and Android tomorrow to stop the erosion of the 2nd.

 

[JAT]

How about an update to Office 2011!

How about an update to Office 2013 to make it usable!

 

[JAT]

I know what you're saying and there are certainly things to add, but the times of frequent/revolutionary software upgrades are quickly coming to an end.

....

I'm interested to see how software companies like Microsoft manage to overcome this.

They've already shown you what they are trying. Monthly access payments. "Ignore version numbers, just keep paying and we'll provide something."

 

[alphaod]

Stephen Elop sounds like an ambitious d-bag who will be be fall of Microsoft.

 

[AnalyzeThis]

He turned Nokia around from inevitable certain death to a large player in the smartphone market.

Sure thing, just from other end though, you know, the opposite of large. LOL

 

[jimonqa]

I'd like Office for iOS simply for reading attachments. Alan Mulally will be the new CEO so all this talk of Stephen Elop is moot.

 

[spiderman0616]

Where did you pick that number from? It is just completely wrong.

The Xbox division has been profitable every year since 2008.

Has it?

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...osses-hidden-by-patent-royalties-says-analyst

 

[wikiverse]

I believe that Office is the only thing keeping MS afloat these days

Yea, that and the fact that there are more computers running windows today than there have ever been apple devices.

I'm glad I don't take investment advice from MR posters because MS and Samsung shares are to of the best performers in my portfolio.

 

[yjchua95]

The problem is tablets are horrible for *creating* content. Specifically, the lack of a windowed interface on the iPad (et al) makes it a royal PITA to type whilst researching. So whether it's Office or iWerk, it's still a rotten user experience.

I accidentally read that as 'Office or tWerk'.

 

[peterdevries]

Pages can no longer do something as simple as flow text between two text boxes. This feature was removed. Outlining was removed. Simple basic stuff like this is gone from Pages and Apple has no plans to put it back.

These removals are annoying, but you do not have any knowledge on Apple's plans about it. It is very clear that Apple has been aiming for feature parity between all environments and wrote it from the ground up (they actually confirmed this).

It is likely that this is a baseline from which development will continue the coming years, keeping feature parity intact and increasing the function set incrementally, likely adding the features back that were now removed.

 

[osx11]

Yea, that and the fact that there are more computers running windows today than there have ever been apple devices.

I'm glad I don't take investment advice from MR posters because MS and Samsung shares are to of the best performers in my portfolio.

Except MSFT has been pretty flat from 2000 to mid 2013. But at least it's not all over the place.....

 

[StoneJack]

Yah, for boutique clothing stores and coffee shops worldwide. Meanwhile, everyone else still uses Office. It's the most institutionalized part of MS's business, even more so than Windows. But perhaps you were being sarcastic.

I have nothing to criticize the enterprise usage of MS Office. It does have its place there, more probably through Sharepoint and other things like that. However, while number of large corporations is limited, consumers are much wider and larger market. For iOS alone, there have been, what, 700 million devices? Coupled with Android, this number is sufficiently greater than any number of large corporations which use Office. Besides, truly large corporations would probably use their proprietary computing systems and installations rather than MS Office. Two widely used software programs would be Excel and Powerpoint and now Powerpoint can be easily replaced by Keynote, which is far superior in terms of usability, while Excel will remain at offices for long time...before it gets replaced because most users might migrate to central server/clients/tablets mode and run not Windows, but iOS or Android...maybe except bookkeeping departments stuck with their decades long records in Excel

 

[Glenny2lappies]

- Where else will MS grow? Their desktop business is shrinking globally....

Their old core desktop business has had its day. The writing's on the wall for the desktop PC and the Office suite. Like the music industry, you've had it good for many years, now the market's changed and you'll just have to learn to adapt. Remember they still have a massive market share of "productivity" applications in business (I'm not going to pull some number out of my backside here; all I can say that *all* clients I deal with use MS Office as their "productivity" applications)

Microsoft's future is very strong in other areas. Their development environment is very good (I'd take ASP.NET with Visual Studio any day over Java and Eclipse). Their server systems are good: SQL server vs Oracle is an interesting fight to watch. Like it or not, SharePoint seems to be pretty strong.

Sure the world moves on and Microsoft have had Monkey Boy missing the plot; but it's not all about Office and Windows.

One could also wag fingers at the mighty Apple over their utterly proprietary and expensive computers which are impossible to upgrade or repair. Or the feature-free user "productivity" applications which some people still think can do more than 10% of what MS Office does.

Lets face it; Apple is a consumer company, Microsoft is primarily a business company which happens to do consumer goods (albeit badly these days!).

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These removals are annoying, but you do not have any knowledge on Apple's plans about it. It is very clear that Apple has been aiming for feature parity between all environments and wrote it from the ground up (they actually confirmed this).

That's funny! It's like something out of Dilbert.

What's our strategy... I know, lets remove all the professional features and ensure parity with a platform that's utterly restricted in content generation (that's the iPad)...

I'm sure that even a student wanting to write an essay would struggle with the absence of features from Pages!

If you must, look at Libre Office. But compared with MS Word, Pages just isn't the same thing.

 

[/dev/toaster]

Selling off Xbox? The only profitable and loved part of your company?

Wow, just saw off your legs why don't you MS

This is the only product that I give Microsoft money for. Microsoft needs to focus on what it is good at. Xbox is one of them.

Bing on the other hand, just needs to go. They need to get rid of all the Me too™ products.

 

[Michael Goff]

This is the only product that I give Microsoft money for. Microsoft needs to focus on what it is good at. Xbox is one of them.

Bing on the other hand, just needs to go. They need to get rid of all the Me too™ products.

Xbox was a "Me too" product, though.

I assume you mean they should get rid of all the "Me too" products that you don't personally like?

 

[knewsom]

I'm not sure he destroyed Nokia's value due to incompetence, more likely he competently made it cheaper for Microsoft to buy it.

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You cannot compare the sales growt of someone starting in the single digits with someone with an already large market share. Obligatory xkcd...

I guess you think a company with market share in the single digits must just be a dud, huh? I guess that's why you're an Apple fan?

The point is that Nokia's long-term growth looks very promising, as does the Windows Phone platform as a whole. I'm not saying it's going to destroy iOS or Android - just that it's a player, and it's here to stay. ...which is good for ALL of us.

 

[danuff]

Stephen Elop as MS CEO?

Well, dumb people pick out dumb CEO replacements. Enough said.

 

[/dev/toaster]

Xbox was a "Me too" product, though.

I assume you mean they should get rid of all the "Me too" products that you don't personally like?

Yes it was a "me too" product along with the hundreds of others that were canceled by now. Currently the xbox is very successful so they should keep it.

Bing is never going anywhere its time to stop burning money.

 

[Michael Goff]

Yes it was a "me too" product along with the hundreds of others that were canceled by now. Currently the xbox is very successful so they should keep it.

Bing is never going anywhere its time to stop burning money.

Except Bing is going places, just not as a search engine. :|

Edit: By the way, my point was that you saying "get rid of all those Me Too products" would mean they would have gotten rid of the Xbox. Also, the Xbox didn't do so well for a majority of its life. The 360 didn't even do well for a majority of its life.