After four years, Microsoft has now released fully functional Office apps for Apple’s iPad – Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They are free to install but do require a Microsoft Office 365 subscription to be able to use all of the features. Without a subscription, users will only be able to open and read documents, you cannot create new documents or edit without the subscription.
Downloading and installing these apps takes a few steps, one would assume you can just go to the App Store and search for “Microsoft Office” but you cannot, each of these programs has to be downloaded separately under their respective names. Current Office 365 users need to download and then activate each of these programs one-by-one. Hopefully in the future the process will be more streamlined.
Over one billion people across the globe use Microsoft Office! It is about time these two technology giants collaborated a deal. Apple will be taking 30% of every Office 365 subscription on the iPad. The annual cost of a subscription is $99.99. Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella is being praised on Twitter for his work and vision. Even Apple’s CEO Tim Cook congratulated Nadella in a Tweet. Business seems to be looking up for Microsoft, their shares are up 11% since Nadella took reign as CEO on February 4th.
Bringing these two companies together and offering the Office Suite on the iPad provides a strong incentive for more organizations to consider purchasing Office 365.
Does being able to use your Office 365 subscription on 5 PCs (Windows or Mac) and 5 mobile devices increase the incentive for purchasing a license now that your iPad is included? Let us know.
