Microsoft was promising Office for iOS prior Windows 8, it was rumored to be almost ready. Then Windows 8 came and now I believe chances for that within next year or two are practically nil.
Office is of course a major selling point of Windows 8 and until Windows either makes or breaks in mobility, I cannot see there to be Office outside Windows. It usually Takeshita while, maybe 2 years or more, until OS grows enough to show it has made it. I believe MS needs to grow their 2% market share to over 10% until they can say Windows made it.
So what other chances are there to get some commercial strength user friendly Office products into iOS and Android?
A) The current product providers like Smart Office could try to get their suite into usable form. However as this has not happened yet I'm not holding my breath for this.
B) Open Office could be ported to mobility suite - arguably there could be quite a lot of work doing this though, but the product suite is quite neat so this is for somebody a real opportunity.
C) Emulator programs for the Windows mobile version; there is actually already a product out there that emulates some 750,000 apps on iOS, Android and Windows. However Microsoft could still potentially stop use of their Office with licensing reasons.
So folks it does not look too rosy right now and until we get some real productivity tools into tablets and Smart Devices they will stay as gimmicks and gadgets rather than become the next gen professional tools they could be.
What do you think?
As a side note Blackberry (ex RIM) raved prior to releasing v10 that their devices were going to support all competitor apps via some clever in-built emulator code - does anybody know whether that promise was delivered?