The iPad is the most popular tablet on the market right now; there is just no doubt about it. Apple was able to get this product to the masses way ahead of the competition and at a time when most analysts were saying that the concept of the tablet was dead. Now we are well into the second generation of iPad hardware and already talking about the third. These products are finding their way into the business community and the corporate world is eager for a productivity suite that matches what they use on the desktop.

For some they are going to use products like Xen App or Xen Desktop to deliver this experience, still more may turn to VMWare and their application virtualization software. Both of these options can be expensive to implement and maintain. To make sure that Microsoft gets a large slice of the iPad productivity pie they will want to release a local client, or at the very least one that ties into something like Office 360.  

We also need to remember that Microsoft of going to release Windows 8 for ARM based CPUs. The iPad runs off of a dual core ARM CPU (inside the A5). By writing Office for the iPad they are going to get some experience in making sure that their version of Office works on the ARM platform. This app can also be a lead-in to tempting someone over to a Windows 8 based tablet in the future (if Microsoft can do the marketing right, which I doubt).

Although this is nothing more than a rumor at this stage, we can already see reasons that Microsoft would invest time into building this product.  My only hope is that they devote some time to the Android world as well.

Source CNET

Discuss this in our Forum