After Intel spent billions to subsidize 40M Android Atom tablets, Microsoft releases Office only for

Posted:
in iPad edited January 2015
Intel's mobile chip division has lost $7 billion over the last two years while heavily subsidizing the manufacturing costs of Android tablet makers agreeing to use the chipmaker's Atom mobile x86 processors. Microsoft's new Office for Android won't run on any of them.

PowerPoint for some Android tablets


Last March, Microsoft introduced its first tablet-optimized edition of Office exclusively for iPad. The company has now launched a public beta that allows Android 4.4 KitKat and 5.0 Lollipop tablet users to try out its Office apps, but only on tablets using ARM chips.

That excludes all of the 40 million Atom tablets Intel paid manufacturers to ship this year. Significant Android tablets using Intel Atom processors (and therefore incompatible with Office) include include Nokia's N1, Samsung's Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, the Dell Venue 7 and 8, Tesco Hudl 2, the $99 HP 7 tablet, and a variety of products sold under the brands Acer Iconia; Asus MeMo Pad, PadPhone X and Transformer Pad; Lenovo Yoga and Toshiba Excite Go and Encore.According to Google, less than 40 percent of the entire Android installed base accessing its Google Play store is running a version of the OS capable of supporting Microsoft's Office

Microsoft's Office also doesn't support the fringes of Android tablets smaller than 7 inches or larger than 10.1 inches, such as Samsung's Note Pro 12.1.

Even some tablets that are the "correct" size are excluded for performance reasons, including Samsung's Galaxy Tab 4. That's a $200, 7 inch tablet that a Microsoft representative explained wasn't currently supported because it was too slow, an issue he said Microsoft is "working to resolve."

Office for Android also excludes support for all of the ARM tablets that haven't been (or can't be) upgraded to KitKat. According to Google, less than 40 percent of the entire Android installed base accessing its Google Play store is running a version of the OS capable of supporting Microsoft's Office. As of this week, less than 0.1 percent has Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Android Dashboard Google


Last year, when Microsoft introduced Office for iPad, it supported all models apart from the four year old original iPad; all iPad models from 2011 or later can be upgraded to the latest software supporting Office apps.

Microsoft has stated that it won't deliver a touch-optimized version of Office apps for its own Windows products until the launch of Windows 10, which is expected late this year.

Atom vs ARM

Intel's Atom is the scaled down, low power version of its desktop x86 chips that have powered the overwhelming majority of desktop PCs since IBM shipped its first personal computer in 1982. Macs have also used Intel x86 chips since Apple switched from PowerPC in 2006.

However, after Intel turned down Apple's iPhone business in 2006 and then subsequently failed to win back a role for Atom in the iPad in 2010, its has witnessed an explosion of mobile devices powered by the competing ARM architecture. Despite a variety of efforts to push Atom chips, Intel has made very little progress.

Originally codeveloped in a partnership between Acorn and Apple in the late 1980s, mobile ARM chips first saw only limited use in the Newton Message Pad for which they were created. After being selected by Nokia, however, ARM garnered widespread use in simple phones in the 1990s.

Steve Jobs sold off Apple's wildly profitable investment in ARM in the late 1990s, reaping a major windfall that helped financed the company's turnaround. In 2001, Apple selected ARM chips to power its then new iPod, benefitting from the vast economies of scale Nokia and other high volume phone makers had created by standardizing on the ARM architecture.

Ten years later, Apple had sold hundreds of millions of ARM-based devices, from iPods to iPhones to iPads to Apple TVs and Airport Basestations. In 2010, it launched its first Apple branded ARM chip, the A4, featuring its first efforts to diverge from standard ARM designs manufactured by Samsung.

"We have a chip called A4," Jobs announced when showing the original iPad. "which is our most advanced chip we've ever done that powers the iPad. It's got the processor, the graphics, the I/O, the memory controller -- everything in this one chip, and it screams."

The next year, Apple released iPad 2 powered by A5, which Steve Jobs referred to as the "first dual core tablet to ship in volume," a claim ridiculed by bloggers even though it remained the only tablet to ship in any meaningful volumes throughout the rest of the year.

iPad 2 A5


Over the past five years, Apple has launched a series of increasingly sophisticated ARM chips including A7, the world's first 64-bit ARM used in production, and the latest A8X, which rivals the power and sophistication of Intel's notebook x86 CPUs from just a few years ago and beats Nvidia's own efforts to bring desktop class GPUs to mobile devices with the Tegra K1, all while using far less power and dissipating less heat.

Apple's A8X powers iPad Air 2 graphics faster than Google's Nexus 9 w/ Nvidia Denver Tegra K1 http://t.co/X0avk8B6vN pic.twitter.com/CeJiQyZqhs

-- Daniel Eran Dilger (@DanielEran)


Over just the past three years, Apple has sold 76 million iPods, 197 million iPads and over 444 million iPhones, all at premium product tiers with Average Selling Prices and profit margins far above its competitors. That has fueled billions in profits Apple has reinvested into, among other things, custom ARM chip designs.

Apple now has no need for Intel's mobile Atom chips, which lag ARM designs in both processing power and efficiency. And increasingly, Apple's rapid pace of mobile chip development is causing industry observers to speculate that the company may eventually move to replace Intel's x86 chips used in Macs with internally designed ARM alternatives.

Apple still maintains a working relationship with Intel, despite the chipmaker's efforts to get other PC makers to copy Apple's designs, from MacBook Air lookalike "Ultrabooks" to Mac mini clones.

At the same time, Intel has been scrambling to hedge its dependence upon Microsoft in PCs ever since its software partner announced plans to port Windows to ARM, a two year project that largely ended in failure after ARM-powered Windows PCs, including Microsoft's own Surface RT, flopped.

Intel announced plans to partner with Google and Motorola to deliver Atom-powered smartphone in 2011 that also flopped; the company also partnered with Nokia and then Samsung to develop a non-Android mobile Linux that has also gained very little traction.

Even if Apple weren't selling millions more tablets than any other maker, and weren't earning billions in iPad profits while the rest of the market limped between profitless tablet flops, the company's iPad initiatives have decisively split up the WinTel monopoly that once led the PC industry. Apple's partnership with IBM seeks to further accelerate the trend toward mobile devices at the expense of Intel and Microsoft, as well as Google and its Android partners.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 54
    mj webmj web Posts: 918member
    Didn't AI run this article last month too?
  • Reply 2 of 54
    droidftwdroidftw Posts: 1,009member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by MJ Web View Post



    Didn't AI run this article last month too?

     

    It may certainly read that way as DED's articles often re-hash the same topics that he's created (hence the use of the same graphics each time and citing himself as a source), there is some new news regarding MS Office on Android.  They've opened up their private beta of Office for Android tablets to the public, but MS is saying it's still in a 'preview' phase at the moment.

     

    http://blogs.office.com/2015/01/06/office-android-tablet-preview-expands/

  • Reply 3 of 54
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    The new Tegra X 1, which isn't out yet, does look very good though.
  • Reply 4 of 54
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    mj web wrote: »
    Didn't AI run this article last month too?
    The average DED article is almost entirely indistinguishable from any other after the first few paragraphs. They all descend into the same anti-Apple competitor word soup, so much so that there surely must be some copy-pasting going on. It's unthinkable that any one would have the patience to type out the exact same stuff week after week.
  • Reply 5 of 54
    But but but Davlik is a virtual machine and so it doesn't matter what kind of chip is used
  • Reply 6 of 54
    Dan_DilgerDan_Dilger Posts: 1,583member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Crowley View Post





    The average DED article is almost entirely indistinguishable from any other after the first few paragraphs. They all descend into the same anti-Apple competitor word soup, so much so that there surely must be some copy-pasting going on. It's unthinkable that any one would have the patience to type out the exact same stuff week after week.



    I'd say the same about your contemptuous screeds about how much you hate the author.



    Except that the article actually articulates novel ideas that one could agree with or not, while your hate posts say absolutely nothing. One can't even disagree with you, because you haven't taken any position or critiqued any idea from the article. 

     

    You are literally just whimpering contempt. Why don't you say something worth discussing?

  • Reply 7 of 54

    Paul Thurrott isn't going to like this article one little bit...

  • Reply 8 of 54
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member

    Originally Posted by melgross View Post



    The new Tegra X 1, which isn't out yet, does look very good though.



    "Your wife will love the dual-core Tegra chipset."

    - actor in a Verizon ad for a long-defunct Android tablet (June 2011)

  • Reply 9 of 54
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by SockRolid View Post

    "Your wife will love the dual-core Tegra chipset."

    - actor in a Verizon ad for a long-defunct Android tablet (June 2011)


     

    “It’s not lacking any FLOPS. And that’s what real women need! HOO HOO HUAYH HUAYH!”

    – Quiznos/nVidia tag-team ad

  • Reply 10 of 54
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    “It’s not lacking any FLOPS. And that’s what real women need! HOO HOO HUAYH HUAYH!”

    – Quiznos/nVidia tag-team ad


     

    Wow.  I need to watch more TV or something!

  • Reply 11 of 54
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Crowley View Post





    The average DED article is almost entirely indistinguishable from any other after the first few paragraphs. They all descend into the same anti-Apple competitor word soup, so much so that there surely must be some copy-pasting going on. It's unthinkable that any one would have the patience to type out the exact same stuff week after week.



    I do wonder how many times he intends to re-use the screen grab of that Tweet with the chart, that he seems so excited about.

  • Reply 12 of 54
    mac_128mac_128 Posts: 3,454member
    It's not going to hurt Intel. It's going to hurt Microsoft. Anybody who would buy an Android tablet most likely isn't interested in professional workplace compatibility. They just won't buy office. Spreadsheets, word processing and media presentations are not their main goal.
  • Reply 13 of 54
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Mac_128 View Post



    It's not going to hurt Intel. It's going to hurt Microsoft. Anybody who would buy an Android tablet most likely isn't interested in professional workplace compatibility. They just won't buy office. Spreadsheets, word processing and media presentations are not their main goal.



    Microsoft isn't really interested in Android revenue (isn't that an oxymoron). That's why Android is last, and why MS won't put much effort into it. This is just to check off a box.

  • Reply 14 of 54
    [QUOTE]
    Why don't you say something worth discussing?[/QUOTE]
    Ok then Daniel, how about this?

    After regurgitating the same anti-Android security slur pieces week after week, why have you thus far remained silent on this one:

    [URL=http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/184021/apple-releases-critical-security-update-for-os-x-ntp-services-vulnerability]http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/184021/apple-releases-critical-security-update-for-os-x-ntp-services-vulnerability[/URL]

    I also find it amusing Daniel how you insinuated a couple months ago that "80% of the Android world was on Froyo" and then post a graph this week clearly showing (once again) your error:

    "Originally Posted by [B]Corrections[/B] [URL=http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/183345/wirelurker-masque-attack-malware-only-a-threat-for-users-who-disable-apples-ios-os-x-security/0_100#post_2637808][IMG]http://forums.appleinsider.com/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG][/URL]


    The majority of Android devices around the world -- you know, that "80%" that your sources CNET likes to prattle about -- is not patched and will never be patched."

    [URL=http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/183345/wirelurker-masque-attack-malware-only-a-threat-for-users-who-disable-apples-ios-os-x-security]http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/183345/wirelurker-masque-attack-malware-only-a-threat-for-users-who-disable-apples-ios-os-x-security[/URL]
  • Reply 15 of 54
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member

    The article mentions the possibility of future ARM Macs. But do we think Microsoft might release an ARM version of Windows 10 desktop? I know Surface RT failed (as the article mentions) but I am talking about the desktop version of Windows. Imagine if all those millions of office workers which are Intel's bread and butter got cheap little ARM boxes on their desks running Windows 10.

  • Reply 16 of 54
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mac_128 View Post



    It's not going to hurt Intel. It's going to hurt Microsoft. Anybody who would buy an Android tablet most likely isn't interested in professional workplace compatibility. They just won't buy office. Spreadsheets, word processing and media presentations are not their main goal.



    But but but Android is winning in the enterprise. Or, if it isn't it surely will, because there is no way Apple's iOS is going to be successful in the enterprise. Or something.

     

    "It's not going to hurt Intel. It's going to hurt Microsoft."

    Rather, it sounds like it is hurting any Android user who is under the illusion that their purchase automatically provides some form of  "professional workplace compatibility".

     

    Oh, but that's OK, because no-one buys an Android for that? So it is actually MS and Apple who are suffering here.

    So goes the convoluted thought processes of the average Android user (not you, Mac_128).

  • Reply 17 of 54
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Corrections View Post

     



    I'd say the same about your contemptuous screeds about how much you hate the author.



    Except that the article actually articulates novel ideas that one could agree with or not, while your hate posts say absolutely nothing. One can't even disagree with you, because you haven't taken any position or critiqued any idea from the article. 

     

    You are literally just whimpering contempt. Why don't you say something worth discussing?


    Thanks for the "correction" Dan.  It was just a jibe at your expense, I momentarily forgot how humourless and insecure you are.

     

    For the record I'm not contemptuous of you.  As I implied, the first few paragraphs of your articles are normally fairly original, and I'll add that they are often interesting (the occasional ranty editorial non-withstanding).  It's the following ten paragraphs of usually repetitive and aggressive biased history and selective statistics against any and every competitor of Apple that I have a problem with.  

     

    Are you paid by the word?  I can't see any other reason why this article needed the lecture on Atom vs ARM.  Your big long editorially posts have their place, and some seem to like them (I don't, but that's a different topic), but if you're posting news commentary then a bit more brevity and less copy-pasting previously shared ideas would make your product a lot more palatable.

     

    I don't think for a second that you'll take this as constructive, you seem hypersensitive to any criticism, as the post history for the "Corrections" account is evidence of.

     

     

    P.S. The fact that you hide behind a forum account called "Corrections" is worthy of contempt, or at the very least a healthy dose of mockery.  If you're going to respond to critics then put your name on your comments.

  • Reply 18 of 54
    richlrichl Posts: 2,213member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Crowley View Post





    The average DED article is almost entirely indistinguishable from any other after the first few paragraphs. They all descend into the same anti-Apple competitor word soup, so much so that there surely must be some copy-pasting going on. It's unthinkable that any one would have the patience to type out the exact same stuff week after week.

     

    Not to mention linking almost exclusively to his own articles and, in this instance, even referencing his own tweet! 

     

    It's quite sweet how he wraps himself in his own little world. :)

  • Reply 19 of 54
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Crowley View Post

     

    Thanks for the "correction" Dan.  It was just a jibe at your expense, I momentarily forgot how humourless and insecure you are.


    Where's your website of writing so we can all criticise it and see how good you feel?

  • Reply 20 of 54
    ascii wrote: »
    Where's your website of writing so we can all criticise it and see how good you feel?

    Perhaps if Daniel didn't copy & paste the same diatribe filled with factual errors, selected surveys & sockpuppeting week after week, then the criticism of his writing may see a decrease.
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