The iPad tablet is one of the most popular productivity devices in the market right now. Unfortunately, it is lacking arguably one of the top productivity apps out there today – Microsoft Office. While there are many third party apps such as QuickOffice and Documents To Go, an official Office for iPad by Microsoft will likely be a far more popular choice.
As reported by ZDNet, Microsoft is still hard at work on its iPad version of Office and will launch it “sooner than most think”. The product – codename “Miramar” was last heard to be coming in Fall 2014, though new sources have since stated that it could be coming as early as the first half of this year.
As it is, the manner that Office would be made available to consumers is still unknown, though some think that it would only be available with an Office 365 subscription. Such a move is unsurprising as the current Office Mobile for smartphones is only available through the subscription channel. In terms of cloud support, my take on this is the ability to support saving files to the company’s newly rebranded OneDrive cloud storage.
Having Office on the iPad would be a major step forward for Microsoft in terms of availability on all platforms. Given that the iPad is the first choice for most consumers and businesses, it definitely makes sense as to why Microsoft would want to release it on the iPad as soon as possible.