Apple Exploits Microsoft Hesitation on Office - New York Times (blog)

Microsoft may want to rethink its hesitation about bringing its Office applications to the iPad.

On Tuesday, Apple made its own rival suite of productivity apps, iWork, free to anyone who buys new Mac computers and the company’s mobile devices, including iPads. IWork has been around for years, but it hasn’t inflicted much apparent damage on Office, one of the most resilient products at Microsoft.

But without the $9.99 fee that Apple charges for each of the three iWork applications — Pages, a word processor; Numbers, a spreadsheet app; and Keynote, a presentation app — that could change. The apps are free to people who buy new hardware from Apple, but not to the huge numbers of people who already own Apple devices. People who already have iWork can upgrade their apps free, too. (Technically, people who bought iOS 7 devices Sept. 1 or later, or a Mac on Oct. 1 or later, will also qualify.)

Microsoft sells an annual subscription to Office 365 for $100 a year.

Microsoft has developed an iPad version of Office — but for reasons that remain unclear, the company has not released it. The company might want to give its Surface tablets an advantage since those devices come with copies of Office. New versions of the Surface tablets went on sale today.

The more difficult question for Microsoft is whether it can stomach sharing 30 percent of the sales of Office apps for iPad with Apple. That is the standard cut Apple takes for software sold through its App Store.

Apple also took aim at the fees that Microsoft charges people who upgrade from one major release of Windows to another. Apple said existing Mac users can upgrade to the new version of the operating system, Mavericks, for free, waiving the $20 to $30 fee it has charged for such upgrades in the past.

Microsoft charges $120 for people who want to upgrade Windows 7 PCs to Windows 8.1, the latest version of the operating system. The upgrade is free if they have Windows 8 on their systems.

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