Microsoft Office for iOS, Android said to arrive in 2013 -- will this help or hurt Microsoft?

The latest rumors have Microsoft Office launching for iOS and Android early next year. This would certainly help Microsoft on competing tablet and smartphone platforms. But will those gains be offset by the harm done to Windows 8 and RT tablets and Windows Phone 8?

The Verge has what it claims to be a screenshot of Office running on the iPad,and reports that Office will be released for iOS and Android in early 2013. It says that the free version of Office on iOS and Android will only provide the ability to view Office files, but that with a subscription fee for Office 365, you will be able to ability to edit them as well.

This will clearly help Microsoft on competing tablet and smartphone platforms. But it also may harm the company's hopes to gain market share for Windows 8 and RT tablets, and for Windows Phone 8.

Windows RT tablets ship with a free version of Office as does Windows Phone 8. That gives those platforms some competitive advantage over iOS and Android smartphone and tablets. Today, if you want Office on a tablet or smartphone, you've got to buy a device that runs on a platform from Microsoft. But by early next year, if the Verge report is accurate, you'll be able to get Office on a device that runs on competing platforms.

So there's no doubt that releasing Office on iOS or Android will make it somewhat harder for Microsoft to gain tablet or smartphone martket share. But that's more than offset by the gains Microsoft will making by having Office run on iOS and Android.

Windows is no longer Microsoft's main cash cow. Its most recent earnings report shows that the Windows division's net income was down 22% and revenue down 8% compared to a year previous. Its revenue of $3.24 billion trailed the Business Division's revenue of $5.5 billion and the Server and Tools business of $4.55 billion.

Office is part of the Business Division, which is Microsoft's biggest revenue generator. Having Office available on iOS and Android will certainly help increase Microsoft's revenue. And it will do more as well: It will help make sure that people continue to use Office rather than Google Docs or Google Apps. That's more important than the relatively small incremental market share Microsoft may gain by not releasing a version of Office for iOS and Android.

So releasing Office for iOS and Android is a very good move for Microsoft, and a recognition that its future is beyond Windows.

Microsoft Word 2013 Will Introduce PDF Editing

Over the past couple of days we have been hearing a lot of things about the upcoming version of Microsoft’s most popular Office Suite the Office 2013,as we have already reported earlier this week that the Beta is expected as early as next week.

As we inch closer for the beta release,more details about the upcoming features of Office 2013,One of the most appealing features this time around is the PDF Editing support.So now whenever you download a PDF document you can directly open it in the Word and can edit the same without use of any third party tool,as reported earlier byLiveSide.

This is how it will work,

To convert a PDF, you open it like you would any other document.

1. Click File > Open > Browse.
2. Find the PDF and click Open.

The converted document might not have a perfect page to page correspondence with the original. The conversion works best with mostly textual documents.

Paul Thurrott also reported about some new features coming to Office 2013,PDF viewer as well as a new Reading mode which allows the conventional Word Documents as well as the PDF documents to be viewed in a columnar fashion which adjusts the text automatically for a better viewing alignment.

As you can see from the above screenshots which shows the new Reading Mode.In the existing version of Office there is a feature of saving the document as a PDF(Office 2010) and even a plugin is available for the same feature to work on Office 2007.So with the upcoming release of Office 2013 we can expect some more interesting features like the one shown above and as we all know that the final release is at least half a year away we can certainly expect some more features to be added to the final version of Office 2013.

Office 2013 will be available in the desktop version of Windows 8 as well as in the ARM version i.e for the Windows RT version of the upcoming operating system.

Microsoft Announces Office 2013 Customer Preview, Windows XP and Vista Not Supported

Yesterday at the press conference held in San Francisco the Software Giant announced the much awaited Office 2013,next version of company’s popular productivity suite.

The rumors about a supposed beta release of Office 2013 were floating around at the start of the month,but now as confirmed yesterday by Microsoft,the Customer Preview version of Office 2013 is now available for download over web.The suite contains all the good old popular tools like Word,PowerPoint,One Note,OutLook and Excel with a touch of Metro interface,with intuitive design which works well with touch, stylus, mouse or keyboard inputs across Windows-based devices, including tablets.along with the other features like Cloud support and social service support like Yammer and Skype.

This version of Office will support Windows 7 as well as the upcoming Windows 8 operating system,however Microsoft has decided to close the doors for the older operating systems,so all those who own a Windows XP or Vista operating system wont be able to use this version of office suite.To use it with the Windows 8 version,you would have to at least update to Windows 8 Release Preview till the final release goes public in October.

This is quite a clever move by Microsoft,to lure the consumers to upgrade to the latest and greatest operating system.With the newly announced upgrade plans for the users it won’t  burn their pockets to shed  39.99$ for a Windows 8 Pro upgrade which is the cheapest of all the version.This version will support both the Wind0ws 8 version as well as the newly launched Windows RT version of devices including Microsoft Surface Tablet.

You can download the Office 2013  Customer Preview Now

Office 2013 and Windows Phone 8 Release Dates Supposedly Leaked

A couple of days ago Microsoft officially announced the release dates for the Windows 8 public release on 26th of October,but that is not the only product scheduled to be released by the software giant.

Windows Phone 8 and the next version of Microsoft office i.e Office 2013 is also expected to be released in the coming months,with the Preview release of Office 2013 which was released a few days ago,its about time for the rumors for the launch dates for both the products.

Apparently ZDNet has got some inside news from an unnamed sources about the supposed release dates for both Windows Phone 8 and Office 2013.According to their sources the Windows Phone 8 will hit RTM by the month of September while the devices will be available by the month of November.While the Office 2013 is said to be ready for RTM by November while the final release will be in the month of February 2013.

They also reported about the release dates of other Microsoft products like Visual Studio 2012 with RTM coming in August and General Availability by September and Microsoft Dynamics NAV RTM by September and general availability by October.

So it seems that there is a packed scheduled coming up as far as the product launch goes for the Software Giant.