Microsoft's office for iPads not so productive
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Sunday, 30 March 2014
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Microsoft's office for iPads not so productive
There was a time when Microsoft had a monopoly for various
application development in past few decades. But time changes fast and sudden. In
recent years Microsoft’s office applications are not providing as much revenue
to the firm as they used to do.
The main reason for this change can be easily determined
from the switch of people from desktop to fast and portable hand held devices. iPads and other tablets have become attractive
substitutes for many PC functions, like web browsing, watching videos and
reading emails. Last year, global shipments of PCs fell 10% from the year
before, while tablet sales grew 68%, according to the research firm Gartner.
So Microsoft have shown a great desire to
develop office applications for iPads. But they are facing a huge competition from
the various application developers which have grown very good market by
providing more comfortable application to work with. Adam Tratt, chief
executive of Haiku Deck, a presentation app for the iPad that competes with
PowerPoint, sees Microsoft's foray into iPad apps as largely a defensive move,
rather than a chance to generate incremental revenue.
"The opportunity is to not lose a $25
billion market," said Tratt, who was an Office product manager in the
1990s.
"It gave Microsoft a huge opening to
establish the Office franchise," Silverberg said. "Microsoft is in
danger of doing the same kind of thing now."
Microsoft's previous chief executive, Steve
Ballmer, said late last year that the company was working on Office for the
iPad.
From its launch from 2012 office formally
provided no extra revenue which was expected. Another cause for its
unfamiliarity may be that it won’t work good with touchscreens.
