Could Microsoft Office be Heading to the iPad?

[pallentx]

Office Mobile heading to other platforms? | WMExperts

Microsoft has already sent BING to the iPhone and now it looks as if Office Mobile may be following suit. A recent Microsoft job posting for a Business Division Software Engineer reads, in part, "In addition to the current Windows Mobile 6.5 and upcoming WM7 clients, with the recently announced alliance between Microsoft and Nokia we are working to bring Office Mobile to hundreds of millions of Nokia smartphone owners, followed by other leading Smartphone platforms."

One can only assume that the "other leading smartphone platforms" would include the iPhone 4 or possibly Android phones. While expansion isn't necessarily a bad thing, one has to wonder if Microsoft should keep their focus in-house and get Windows Phone 7 finely tuned before branching outwards. Then again, Microsoft is a huge company and having more than one pot on the stove shouldn't be an issue.

If it can show powerpoint out the VGA connector, I would buy it.

 

[Robertt]

It's a pretty safe bet that Microsoft is considering the placement of its applications software on devices that might include the iPad. It is just a matter of time before their system software drives an iPad competitor.

 

[pallentx]

I think they would be happy to have it on their own devices AND their competitor's devices. The same way Amazon is happy to have us buy books for the Kindle app on the iPad.

 

[sch]

I've been waiting for this for a LONG time. All the apps out there that purport to be Office replacements are, in truth, far from it.

Cheers,

 

[sch]

If it can show powerpoint out the VGA connector, I would buy it.

BTW, you can do that now by using the Keynote app with your PPT file.

Cheers,

 

[pallentx]

If it can show powerpoint out the VGA connector, I would buy it.

BTW, you can do that now by using the Keynote app with your PPT file.

Cheers,

yeah, but I want one app that can read, edit, modify, create and show powerpoint 2007. Why is that so hard?

 

[Bremen]

If the price is not absurd, I'm there. Hope it would have Dropbox support

I like my Documents to Go, but I'd drop it in a heart beat for the "real" thing......

 

[pallentx]

If the price is not absurd, I'm there. Hope it would have Dropbox support

I like my Documents to Go, but I'd drop it in a heart beat for the "real" thing......

I dont know about dropbox, but I would expect that it would support sharepoint (corporate hosted web file sharing) and office live (microsoft hosted web file sharing - you get 25GB free storage right now).

 

[martinc31415]

I really need at least MS Word on this thing.

 

[epb]

The Office suite would be... sweet. My harshest criticisms of the iPad lie with its productivity capabilities.

 

[pallentx]

Holy crap! We sort of have Office Mobile for iPad. If you have a hotmail/windows live account, go to the Office section when you log in. They have something like office lite that works in the iPad browser. I just created an excel sheet and a word document in my Sky Drive (25GB free). I opened them and edited them. Its a little slow and you have to be online obviously, but it works and it should be able to read "real" Office docs. I had read that this was coming, but didnt realize they already had it up and running.

Now, if they would just make an App that syncs all this locally, it would be perfct!

 

[pallentx]

Can anyone see this? Its an test excel doc I made and put in my public folder.
Book1.xlsx - Microsoft Excel Web App

It may require you to have a Windows Live account. If you have an account, you can create docs on the website with office "lite". You can share docs for editing to other windows live users.

 

[epb]

I don't have Windows Live, but yeah, I can see it fine. It won't open in Excel though, some sort of permissions error message.

 

[iVan]

The real question is: Will Apple be selling it?

 

[pallentx]

I don't have Windows Live, but yeah, I can see it fine. It won't open in Excel though, some sort of permissions error message.

If you have a windows live account, you can also click 'edit in browser'. I am shocked that the web version of these products works in Safari on the iPad.I figured they would use Silverlight or some proprietary technology.