Microsoft's Office for iPad apps notch 27M downloads in 46 days
After a highly anticipated launch in late March, Microsoft's Office for iPad suite of productivity apps is still going strong in the iOS App Store after having accumulated some 27 million downloads as of Monday.
In an announcement at the TechEd Conference on Monday, Microsoft's General Manager for Office Julia White said its iPad suite, which includes native Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps, has hit the 27 million download mark 46 days after its debut in March, reports Business Insider
The news comes after the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced another milestone for the software suite in early April, when it was learned that the collective iPad apps were downloaded 12 million times in one week.
The hotly-anticipated group of apps rocketed to the top of Apple's iOS App Store charts one day after launch and held their high ranking positions for some time. As of this writing, Word is still the fourth most-downloaded free iPad app, while Excel and PowerPoint have dropped to number 22 and 26 in the rankings, respectively.
Being so-called "freemium" apps, Microsoft requires users to purchase an in-app subscription to unlock full software capabilities. For Office, users can view documents for free, but need to have an Office 365 subscription to make edits.
Apple is taking the usual 30 percent cut of all subscription sign-ups, as is the company's policy for all in-app purchases. Office 365 subscriptions cost $99 per year or $9.99 per month.
In an announcement at the TechEd Conference on Monday, Microsoft's General Manager for Office Julia White said its iPad suite, which includes native Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps, has hit the 27 million download mark 46 days after its debut in March, reports Business Insider
The news comes after the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced another milestone for the software suite in early April, when it was learned that the collective iPad apps were downloaded 12 million times in one week.
The hotly-anticipated group of apps rocketed to the top of Apple's iOS App Store charts one day after launch and held their high ranking positions for some time. As of this writing, Word is still the fourth most-downloaded free iPad app, while Excel and PowerPoint have dropped to number 22 and 26 in the rankings, respectively.
Being so-called "freemium" apps, Microsoft requires users to purchase an in-app subscription to unlock full software capabilities. For Office, users can view documents for free, but need to have an Office 365 subscription to make edits.
Apple is taking the usual 30 percent cut of all subscription sign-ups, as is the company's policy for all in-app purchases. Office 365 subscriptions cost $99 per year or $9.99 per month.
Comments
Now let's get a report on how many [B]ACTIVE/[B] users of these suites there are.
Meaningless without Office 365 subscriptions numbers to compare.
Its like test drive application. Its nothing with out Office 365.
27 million downloads. Ok good for both Apple and Microsoft.
Now let's get a report on how many ACTIVE/ users of these suites there are.
That would be interesting number to see. My thinking would be that most already had alternative apps so 1 out of ten , at most, would end up being subscribers, still a big number.
Just keep handing that 30% over to Apple.
Those who already have an Office 365 sub, purchased directly from MSFT, would be able to unlock these iPad apps with that sub. So the number of subs sold via in-app purchases could be very, very small. But that doesn't really matter. The big picture here is the further validation of the iPad in the enterprise and among MSFT Office customers. I doubt Apple cares much at all about the Office 365 in-app purchase revenue compared to this validation that confirms what we all knew; that the iPad is indeed a productivity tool as well as an information appliance.
Love 'em or Hate 'em, these apps rule in business.
I thought I read somewhere the subscription price dropped twenty or thirty bucks a year from the above quote price.
Anyway, the ever-buggy "Word" apps leads the pack in downloads. Apple's Pages only needs about 20% more features than it has now to satisfy most of the users who are stuck on Word for College student paper needs, however, there will always be a place for some features Word offers.
Excel has it's place in some businesses too, where its features have unique applications. It may be harder for Apple to dislodge Excel in those places, but for a good swath of users, Numbers will get the job done.
Like many a power users I'm not interested in learning a new program when I don't need to do so, but if one is going to move to a touch interface, with a program really designed for that kind of interface, then Apple's iWork is best, albeit less full-featured.
Currently Microsoft is trying to shoehorn Office (which is highly dependent on a Mouse/Keyboard form of input) onto the "Touch" metaphor, and I'm not impressed with how messy they are doing that. Word was patched onto over and over for over 10 years, and now MS is patching a new interface on top of that pile of spaghetti code.
Apple, on the other hand, is adding back features as they can figure out how to add them most correctly for the "touch" interface. I'm not impressed with how leisurely they are going about doing that, although I see that route yielding the best results in the end for an easy app to learn and use.
Apple's Pages only needs about 20% more features than it has now to satisfy most of the users who are stuck on Word for College student paper needs...
Apparently, Apple really dropped the ball with respect to citations and bibliographies in the new Pages. It worked fine in Pages 2009 from what I have heard but now there are quite a few academics and researchers who are going back to Word for just those two features. Fortunately, my college paper writing days are long past. I still publish a lot of works but only in inDesign after the heavy lifting has been done by the doctors and engineers.
But how much money have they made?
If 1 out of 10 signs up through App Store, apple stands to make 0.30$ per share just from that this quarter. If 33% then apple stands to make 1$ per share.
27 million downloads - 10% of these is 2.7 million - $100/user is $270 million gross. Apple takes 30% or $81 million. Share count is current 877 million so more like $.10 per share.
How many of those downloads were deleted, like mine, and never used after realizing it's a waste of money and no trial, in contrast to iWork?!
But how much money have they made?
App revenue is not a disclosed iTunes/App Store statistic.
That said, MS Word is ranked #31 in the top grossing iPad apps, MS Excel is #71. Top grossing is a category that includes in-app purchases versus top paid which is the category that tracks apps that require a purchase initially.
Previous Microsoft Office 365 subscribers would not count in the top grossing category, because there would be no in-app purchase; the same would go for enterprise Office users.
The presence of these MS Office apps on the iPad top grossing list is solely due to people who downloaded the apps and purchased an Office 365 subscription from the app itself.
It is worth noting that an Office 365 subscription key can be purchased from Amazon for about ~$65-70.
27 million downloads - 10% of these is 2.7 million - $100/user is $270 million gross. Apple takes 30% or $81 million. Share count is current 877 million so more like $.10 per share.
I can't argue with your arithmetic, but I enjoy the recollection that there was something of a Mexican standoff between Steve Balmer and Tim Cook. Balmer said, "The iPad needs Office so we won't pay you the 30%. You'll give us a better deal because we're special." And Tim Cook responded with: "Office needs the iPad and Microsoft is not special; you're just another developer." We didn't see Office on the iPad for a long time after that, but now Redmond blinked and Balmer's a Has Been.
In other words, it doesn't matter how much money it is precisely. It's enough that neither Redmond nor Cupertino wanted to give it up, and when the dust settled, the best company won!
Apparently, Apple really dropped the ball with respect to citations and bibliographies in the new Pages. It worked fine in Pages 2009 from what I have heard but now there are quite a few academics and researchers who are going back to Word for just those two features. Fortunately, my college paper writing days are long past. I still publish a lot of works but only in inDesign after the heavy lifting has been done by the doctors and engineers.
Apple dropped the ball with a lot of features, and has been bringing several back with each new release. I've been waiting for ages for them to restore linked text boxes. I think the challenge they are having is the web version of the app. Since they want feature parity across all platforms, then none of them get a feature that not all can support. I'm not sure how they would support flowing text across multiple boxes in a web app, that would be quite a trick!
I frequently let them know what I want from the app:
www.apple.com/feedback/
Excel has it's place in some businesses too, where its features have unique applications. It may be harder for Apple to dislodge Excel in those places, but for a good swath of users, Numbers will get the job done.
Uh, no.
Numbers is completely inadequate as spreadsheet. It's not even in the same league as Excel.
I actually find Numbers to be quite useful for my spreadsheet needs. I haven't encountered anything that I wish it did that Excel does. But if there's applications that are missing that I am not aware of, then hey, always room for improvement, eh?
And this is why I made the comment I made. For many users Numbers will do all they need, but if a person needs and uses the more powerful features of Excel, then nothing can take its place. All that said, there are a good many problems where even Excel falls short.
I downloaded Microsoft's Office for iPad just to take a look, but I didn't signup for it.