The iPad has finally officially received the Microsoft Office suite as of today. Some people say it may be too late for Microsoft to enter the iPad market for Office, while others have been rejoicing. Me? When I had my iPad, I would have loved to have it. Since I’ve moved to Windows based tablets, I have no need for the iPad. For those that are locked into the Apple ecosystem, it really makes a lot of sense. It’s great for students and some home users.
Today, we unveiled Office for iPad® – specifically Word, PowerPoint and Excel. But this isn’t simply Office on another device. We thought a lot about what people want to do when they’re on their tablet, iPad functionality, and touch-first when we were building Office for iPad. We reimagined Office on the iPad, while retaining what people love about Office. We hope you’ll be as pleased with the results as we are. In the future, we will bring Office apps to the Windows Store and other popular platforms. In addition to Office for iPad, we’ve gone a step further in our mobile first and cloud first approach, and like Windows Phone, we’ve now made Office Mobile for iPhone and Android phones available for free.