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Microsoft Announces Office for iPad Apps; Office Mobile for iPhone & Android Phones Now Free

By Ng Chong Seng - on 28 Mar 2014, 2:01am

Microsoft Announces Office for iPad Apps; Office Mobile for iPhone & Android Phones Now Free

At a press briefing in which Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella elaborated on his ‘mobile first, cloud first’ strategy for the company, Julia White, general manager for Microsoft Office finally announced Office for iPad (which is actually available as separate Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps).

During her demo, White was keen to stress that this version of Office is designed to shine on Apple’s tablet. As expected, charts, animations, SmartArt graphics, and shapes are supported, and file fidelity (i.e., the content and its formatting) is maintained across platforms and devices. Viewing and presenting documents are features available for free, but if you need to create new content, an Office 365 subscription is needed. Documents are also automatically saved to OneDrive and OneDrive for Business.

Along with the launch of the Office for iPad apps, Microsoft has renamed Office Mobile for Office 365 to simply Office Mobile. Office Mobile (for iPhone and Android phones) now no longer requires an Office 365 subscription if you’re creating, editing, and saving documents for home use; the only thing you need is a Microsoft account (which is free too). However, for business use, an Office 365 subscription is still needed.

Both White and Nadella then went on to talk a bit about the rich developer APIs and cloud infrastructure the company has to offer. Business tools like Windows Intune Company Portal, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Windows Azure Active Directory (which allows single sign-on to hundreds of cloud apps using a single user account hosted in it), and even DocuSign (to demonstrate the eSignature app’s integration with Windows Azure Active Directory and Office 365) all got their share of airtime. Also announced is an Enterprise Mobility Suite, an identity, access, and device management infrastructure for IT admins.

Source: Office Blogs.

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