Microsoft Launches Office Suite for iPad, Word Becomes Top App in US
Today Microsoft released the much anticipated iPad version of their beloved Office suite. The launch has been a tremendous success, being met with millions of downloads and thousands of positive comments and blog articles. In addition to the media buzz, the new Office suite is breaking some app download records, with apps from the Office suite holding 3 out of the top 5 most downloaded apps for the iPad within just the first day!
Only 5 hours after the release Word grabbed the #1 spot as the most downloaded iPad app in the United States, and the rest of the suite is being welcomed as well with Powerpoint being the 4th most downloaded iPad app in the US and Excel being the 3rd. Techies everywhere are expecting the Office suite to stay firmly within the top five for quite a while.
Before the release of Office for iPad there were many critics that were skeptical about whether a large percentage tablet users would be interested in a productivity suite. After all, notebooks and desktops still seem to be the leader in productivity - you don't see office buildings packed with professionals on tablet PCs because most businesses use "regular" computers. Although this skepticism may have seemed logical, it is now obvious that the initial projection of mediocrity was completely inaccurate.
With the number of mobile entrepreneurs growing every year and business-oriented tablet accessories like keyboards, wireless headsets and other peripherals gaining sales year after year, it makes sense that millions of people out there have been anxiously awaiting a tablet version of Office; hence the incredibly successful launch.
While only a few reviews have surfaced online thus far, those that have are overly positive. TechCrunch recently conducted a review of Office and the result was largely positive.
Office for iPad is currently available in 29 languages and 135 markets. It is split into three separate apps - Word, Powerpoint, and Excel - all of which are free to use, unless you want full-functionality with editing features enabled then the price is $5 per month for the whole suite. With a cheap recurring fee structure like this, everyone is expecting Microsoft to earn untold millions off of this release for years to come. Which leads us to the question...
Why did it take so long for Microsoft to release a version of Office for the iPad? With the iPad being released back in 2010 a lot of people started to lose hope that they'd ever get to use Word on their iPad. Some believe that the wait was an intentional marketing ploy to build up the demand and anticipation for the product. Obviously no one is going to believe it took 4 years for Microsoft to develop an app suite' so some degree of strategy must have been involved. Either way, now that it has arrived we are sure nobody is complaining about the wait time anymore.
