Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
After being on sale for only 12 hours, Microsoft Office for the iPad has topped Apple’s App Store chart, indicating the levels of demand for the software.
Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, launched the package last night to much fanfare and can now rest easy that one of the world’s most frequently used pieces of software has been flying off the shelves.
According to App Annie, the app shot to the top of the charts in 16 countries in a matter of hours and it is expected to continue its growth in the coming days.
Currently, the app sits 16th in the overall Irish chart, possibly because it was only released at 6pm Irish time yesterday.
High sales is not just good news for Microsoft, but also for Apple, who will receive 30pc of the revenue generated by the app’s sales.
Nadella’s announcement of MS Office for iPad was his first as CEO of Microsoft, and he was quick to point out this step is just one of many steps towards a totally digitised future.
“What you can do as humans with machines, that’s the future we are building. Phones, tablets, big screens, sensors – they are going to be everywhere – all these things have apps and that exponential growth across connected users, devices and apps are leading to this growth of the cloud.”
Microsoft will be making the iPad app – which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint – available on a freemium basis for viewing documents and it will be available with editing capabilities to Office 365 subscribers, which costs US$69.99 per year or US$6.99 a month.
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