No word from Microsoft on Office for iPad
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SEATTLE (REUTERS) - A top Microsoft Corp executive side-stepped questions on Tuesday about any plans the software maker may have to bring its Office suite of applications to Apple Inc's iPad.
Talk has circulated for more than a year that Microsoft wants to bring native versions of its most profitable product to the hot-selling iPad, which one analyst estimates could generate US$2.5 billion (S$3.1 billion) in extra revenue for Microsoft per year, but would remove an incentive to buying Windows-based tablets.
"We don't take it from the point of view, 'Do we need to have the PC software that's running on every single device?', we look very much at 'What is the experience that we are looking to have on those devices'," said Mr Kurt DelBene, head of Microsoft's Office unit, asked about Office on the iPad at the Morgan Stanley technology investor conference in San Francisco, which was Webcast.
Mr DelBene, who took over leadership of Office from Stephen Elop who left to lead phone maker Nokia in 2010, did not directly address putting native versions of Office applications on the iPad, a subject Microsoft has steered clear of in public.
