In Pictures: Best office apps for Android, round 3
Microsoft's Office apps are finally available for Android smartphones and tablets. Here’s how they stack up against past favorites
Microsoft's Office apps are finally available for Android smartphones and tablets. Here’s how they stack up against past favorites
Google's newly completed Apps suite can't beat Apple's improved iWork or Microsoft Office
Love it or hate it, Microsoft Office has torn up the competition, leaving all manner of software carrion in its wake
Microsoft Office does its best to challenge the reigning Apple iWork.
It's been a busy week for Android news and gossip, with interesting information flying around about both hardware and software alike. Arguably the biggest news is the HTC Droid DNA - or possibly DLX - which is the first non-Motorola device to use the "Droid" moniker and the latest in the long-running series called "HTC is terrible at naming things."
Microsoft's most iconic application suite -- Microsoft Office -- will be moving off the PC and the Windows OS to two mobile platforms, iOS and Android, in early 2013. But will customers in the enterprise, where Office has been a PC standard for years, really care?
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week strongly hinted that the company will craft a Metro-style version of the next Office suite.
Microsoft enjoyed strong income and revenue growth for its third fiscal quarter despite sluggish PC sales, with Xbox and Office doing well, the company reported on Thursday.
For the quarter that ended March 31, Microsoft reported net income of US$5.23 billion, up 31 percent from the same period last year. Third-quarter revenue was $16.43 billion, a jump of 13 percent. Diluted earnings came in at $0.61 per share, up 36 percent.
"We delivered strong financial results despite a mixed PC environment, which demonstrates the strength and breadth of our businesses," Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein said in a statement.
Overall, Windows 7 revenue shrank by approximately 4 percent when compared to the same time last year, from $4.6 billion to $4.4 billion. The company attributed this slackening of demand to sluggish PC sales.
Other business units made up the difference, however. Buoyed by strong Microsoft Office sales, the Microsoft business division generated more revenue than the Windows unit this quarter. It generated $5.2 billion, a jump of 21 percent from last year's $4.3 billion.
Entertainment and devices division revenue grew by 60 percent, coming in at $1.9 billion this quarter, up from $1.2 billion a year ago, owing to strong sales of the Xbox, the Xbox Live service and the Xbox Kinect controller.
Server and tools division revenue grew by 11 percent, to $4.1 billion from last year's $3.7 billion, thanks to continued demand for Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 and other products and services.
Shareholders are receiving a bonus this year of $0.05 per share, thanks to an audit settlement with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service that covered the tax years 2004 to 2006.
Not all the business units proved to be profitable, however. The online services division posted a $726 million loss, which is actually a 3 percent increase from the $709 million loss the year before. The company's agreement to provide Yahoo with search technology has also been criticized for lackluster early results. In a conference call, Klein argued that the company is still concentrating on improving user experiences for the services, which should bring greater revenue in the future.
With Microsoft's Bing search engine, "we have made great strides in relevancy and design," he said, while admitting that "revenue per search is below our expectations."
"While we are pleased with the progress we have made with Bing, there is significant work ahead to improve the monetization of the combined Yahoo and Bing marketplace," he added.
Klein also anticipated that the company's recent partnership with Nokia will help bring more customers to Windows Phone 7, which is part of the company's entertainment and devices division. "Together, Nokia and Microsoft will integrate with greater speed and provide enhanced opportunities for users and partners to share in the success of the new ecosystem," he said.
For the immediate future, however, Microsoft will be relying more heavily on gaming sales and enterprises to spur growth.
"We feel great about how enterprises are investing in IT, and in particular, how they are interested in our product suite," Klein said. "Customers are adopting the whole suite of products, not just the Office applications - SharePoint, Dynamics and Lync. And that provides long-term sustainable growth."
Oracle has imposed a fee of US$90 per user on a plug-in for Microsoft Office that was available at no cost under Sun Microsystems' ownership.
For years, Microsoft had no competition when it came to productivity suites. The vast majority of people and enterprises didn't have to give suites any thought at all. They just chose Microsoft Office.
Microsoft on Tuesday asked a court to stay an injunction that could put a stop to sales of Microsoft Word.
Microsoft knew of the patent held by i4i as early as 2001, but instead set out to make the Canadian developer's software "obsolete" by adding a feature to Word, according to court documents.
A judge on Tuesday ordered Microsoft to stop selling Microsoft Word products in their current form in the U.S., but legal appeals or technical work-arounds make an actual halt of sales unlikely.
As expected, Microsoft on Monday revealed a test version of the next round of its Office suite of products, which will be available in the first half of 2010.
Microsoft Tuesday said it would launch new Mac software later this year that will let Office 2008 for Mac users collaborate with people running the Windows version of the application suite.