Microsoft is letting internal politics get in the way of satisfying the Office using public whom own iPads.
Today's story in the New York Times about Google buying QuickOffice and the efforts from Google to bolster their GoogleApps integration is key to the aquisition. For every Office using worker or company that samples Google Apps, the risk of losing an Office user stares Microsoft in the face, so the Office team has to always be concerned. But while Google Apps is one group making decisions, Microsoft is siloed between the cloud team (Azure), the Office team, it's offshoot Office365 that handles the cloud offering and the Enterprise sales team, at the very least. Then there are the folks managing the relationships with mobile operators who have number to hit overall, as well as the team managing the channel partnerships with the hardware manufacturers who have OS licenses to sell on the new Windows 8 tablets that compete with the iPad.
That last group has the biggest challenge as there in lies the biggest opportunity-sell new Windows Tablets, so if your Dell, Asus (no rear end jokes please), Acer, Samsung, Lenovo or even maybe HP, you wanting Microsoft to delay as long as possible, the roll out of Office for iPad, and even more for Android, because no matter how tightly integrated Office is with the Windows tablets, there's no cathcing up to Apple.
Think if Skype stopped developing for iPad or Android post acquisition. It would put them in a standstill. Well that's really how Office is with iPad today. By not having it out now it's basically given rise to Google Apps. The more Google adds, the less relevent the most used office productivity suite becomes.
Oh, and I won't even begin to bring up Microsoft Lync/Skype and Messenger--that's a whole other mess.
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