Apparently back in February there was some indication that Microsoft might bring its Office suite to Apple's iPad device. Mike Tedesco, Microsoft’s Senior Product Manager for the Macintosh business unit, originally said that the company was looking into the possibility, calling the device "fresh." The Redmond, Washington-based company already planned to bring Office to the Mac in 2011-- an iPad version seemed inevitable.
But on Thursday Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s business division, said that the company has no plans to make a version of Microsoft Office for the iPad. In fact, he told BusinessWeek that Microsoft is taking a "wait and see" approach in regards to tailoring any kind of new software for the Apple tablet. With that said, he didn't rule out the possibility of iPad owners using the web-based version of its Office suite.
As stated in previous reports, Microsoft Office 2010 is expected to hit store shelves on May 12. According to Elop, big corporate partners aren't interested in free Internet office solutions like Google Docs. Rather, they're more interested in cloud-based versions, and are pressing Microsoft to develop a version of Office to fill that need.
As for Google and its free, online office offering, Elop told BusinessWeek that the rival search engine giant hasn't made any headway against Microsoft in regards to the business software market. "We haven’t heard anything about Google making inroads against Office, because they’re not," Elop said.
Microsoft's decision to withdraw Office development for the iPad may stem from Apple's decision to bring its iWork suite to the new tablet.
