Microsoft released its three main Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) on Wednesday into the App Store. By the next day they were already at the top of the free iPad apps in the App Store, and the redesigned Microsoft OneNote was in the fourth spot.
Microsoft also seems to be doing commercially well off this release: the Word app is the number five top-grossing app and Excel is twelfth. Inside of the app users can purchase an Office 365 subscription that gives them access to the editing and creation functionality of these apps. These subscriptions are also available outside of the app, but those purchases won’t impact the App Store’s top grossing list.
It’s an interesting change for Microsoft to start offering these Office apps on iPad: before this week Microsoft was using the lack of Office on the iPad as a selling point for the Surface Tablet and the Windows RT platform. Overall those devices haven’t sold very well, so maybe Microsoft decided to embrace the rival platforms to earn more money. And at $99.99/year for a Office 365 subscription, the company certainly will be earning a lot from it.
