An interesting take on the release of Office for iPad.

From Seeking Alpha (free reg-wall):

Neither [Microsoft] nor Apple could be happy about the progress Google has made in recent years. Google’s Android mobile operating system is dominating the global smartphone market, and Google Drive is threatening Microsoft Office. Google Drive is a free to use Office competitor that also grants users up to 15GB of free cloud storage, a massive perk. Since both Apple and Microsoft have had their business threatened by the growth of Google, teaming up finally makes sense. To be clear, Apple is going to take a 30% cut of the Office iPad sales, but this move is bigger than that. Microsoft has finally realized that it’s about time to move away from its dependence on Windows and partner up with its old rival.

More to the point, Samsung’s series of iPad-bashing commercials has a real problem now. The spots focus on features Samsung tablets bring to the table that competing tablets (iPad, Kindle, Surface) do not. Fair enough.

But Office for iPad is going to be a tough selling point for Samsung to ignore, and easy fodder for future commercials, should Microsoft or Apple choose to go that route.

And on the math of Office 365:

The upside for this transformation by Microsoft is that at $100 per year instead of $50 every 6 years on average, it only needs to retain 1 of every 12 customers to make break even even if it loses 100% of its PC sales, which won’t happen. For prosumers and enterprise customers who rely heavily on Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint, the Office 365 subscription on iOS will make sense. But don’t expect too many casual consumers to fork over $100 per year for Word on their iPad. There’s really no point when iWork and Google Drive are both free.

I agree. I think Microsoft should give every iPad owner a free 1-year subscription to Office 365, along with their free iPad apps. The gap between something already installed and working (and free, since I already own it) and the pain of a new install that I have to pay for and deal with is pretty big. But free would tempt me.