Microsoft Office for iPad: over 27 million downloads on the App Store

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Upon its release in late March, Microsoft Office applications for iPad already accumulated more than 27 million downloads, and that only in the top 10 markets. This has been assured Julia White, director general of the Office division, during its keynote at the TechEd conference in Houston.

J. White has not offered any data on the percentage of conversion of these free downloads from current users with a subscription of Office 365, which may help us to see things with a little more perspective on the success of an initiative that Microsoft was reluctant to launch.

On the one hand this mark reached in 46 days, on the other hand reflects an understandable slowdown downloads when compared to the first 12 million downloads achieved just one week after its release in the App Store when permeating the top of the ranking free downloads. 

Since then, word has remained in the United States a remarkable fourth place while Excel and PowerPoint have fallen up to the number 18 and 23 respectively.

Google divides his Drive in separate applications for iOS

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Google has given us the month-end surprise yesterday launching Documents and Sheets, two separate apps, to manage text documents and spreadsheets stored in Google Drive. An application for each file type: like Apple with iWork and Microsoft with Office for iPad.

There is not a simple separation: each of these applications will have the ability to create and edit documents without an internet connection, with a very clean interface,  focused only on those files. If we want to see the rest of data we have stored in Google Drive, follow its official application available for it. 

The presentation application will "coming soon" to complete the circle office automation. So we have three trios iOS applications face to face: 

• Pages / Word / Documents
• Numbers / Excel / Sheets
• Keynote / PowerPoint / Presentations. 

The battle has begun. 

These two new Google apps are completely free, and you can download for iPhone and iPad from the App Store.

Here's Word to iPad

Satya Nadella began the great change that you want to apply to Microsoft two days ago, launching Office for iPad and embracing iOS as a platform where you can get a good market share in their applications. So far that's what it looks like, because if you open the App Store from an iPad you will see that Word, Excel, PowerPoint and even OneNote are the most downloaded free applications. 

With this scenario, it is time to take a good look at the Office applications. And start with Word, which is probably the most used. It is difficult to know why: globally many more documents are created spreadsheets and presentations. Let's see if Microsoft Word has a champion application in the App Store.

Microsoft finally respects the iOS platform and launches Office done perfectly tailored

After a brief walk about the application, without rummaging through all the sections, I have already taken a good feeling: Microsoft finally he has got the hang of the App Store. He had already hinted with OneNote, but Word (and other Office applications) confirms that this is maintained applications. In Redmond have not been limited to trying to patch something they had or to be ready to protect their selfish platforms: have created a Word from scratch and respecting the platform to be run. Congratulations.

A success of Microsoft , but users will accept it ?

Personally, if these applications are the first of a new era of Microsoft, I'm excited. It does so because this is a matter of good. A simple, easy to use interface, which shows that Word is not locked into what we all take for granted always and I even get to like it more than the pages to have a touch of identifying color.

Where is Word scratched me in their business model. I would not pay for a subscription to Office 365 knowing that I can edit and save .DOC and .DOCX with Pages. And I can also edit documents compatible with Google Drive. We could use the argument format compatibility with the official word, but at this point it comes down to use fonts that are installed font everywhere.

So yes, I think Word is an excellent application... to see Word documents. And that can already do with other alternatives that I'm used, further allow me to edit documents if paying a penny. That's the Word's problem: late.