By Shira Ovide
- Reuters
- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wants to let Office fly– but not too far.
Microsoft MSFT -0.91% is making its ubiquitous Office workplace software available for gadgets from rival Apple AAPL -1.36%. (Insert giant asterisk here.)
Microsoft said this morning it is releasing a mobile version of Office for iPhone. BUT…the iPhone apps are only available to people who have a new consumer version of Office, called Office 365, that people “rent” for a monthly fee, similar to how people subscribe to Netflix. The iPhone version of Office will be available only to people who buy tiers of Office 365 that start at $9.99 a month, or $99.99 a year.
No, there is no full version of Office software for the iPad, nor for tablets and smartphones powered by Microsoft nemesis Google GOOG -0.22%. (Some pieces of Office, including the note-taking app OneNote, already are available as iOS apps.)
Microsoft for some time has had a team of people working on Office for iPhone and the iPad, but Microsoft executives repeatedly say they will hold off releasing Office freely for competing gadgets. Microsoft gets two benefits by limiting the availability of Office on the iPhone. First, it gets to sweeten the allure of Office 365, which Microsoft is pushing very hard. And second, it gets to protect its Windows franchise from competition from Android and Apple tablets.
Microsoft executives say Office is one of the most desired features for tablet computers and other gadgets running Windows 8, the latest (and not universally loved) version of Microsoft’s operating system. If the company makes Office widely available now on Apple or Google-powered tablets and smartphones, it risks blunting one of the major exclusive selling points of tablets, PCs and phones running Microsoft operating software.
Many Wall Street analysts have said Microsoft is missing out on boatloads of revenue by not making Office available as a so-called native app for iOS and Android devices.
“We view this as a very limited first step in the right direction of delivering Office functionality across platforms that compete with its own Windows platform and, for now, not tablets,” Nomura analyst Rick Sherlund said in a research note Friday. “Office is a bigger business for Microsoft than Windows, so we see more urgency to preserve and extend the Office franchise cross platform.”
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