Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) Office for iPad Hits 12 Million Downloads

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) tweeted that the Office for iPad reached 12 million downloads in one week. The software giant posted, “More than 12 million downloads of Word, Excel, PPT & OneNote for #iPad from the @AppStore.”

The Office app for iPad immediately topped the chart in the App Store of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in just 12 hours when it became available on Thursday, March 27. Apple CEO Tim Cook welcomed the availability of the Office software in the iPad via tweeter message.

Satya Nadella, the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) revealed the decision of the software giant to make the Office software available to non-Windows devices during an event in San Francisco.

The company has a long standing Windows-first policy particularly with the Office software, but Nadella moved away from it. He believed that making the Office software and other products available to non-Windows devices such as the iPad is critical for the growth of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in the future.

During the unveiling of the Office for iPad last week, Julia White, general manager of Microsoft Office said, “In this cloud-first mobile-first world, Microsoft is focused on empowering people to get more done wherever they need to and on any device, to help people do more on the device they choose.”

While demonstrating the Office for iPad, White showed that the Word is “very natural on the iPad.”  According to her, “This is a design paradigm we balanced to make sure these are great familiar [Microsoft] Office applications but also a wonderful touch iPad experience, so that way we know all our customers can be comfortable using these apps right away to get more done.”

The subscribers of Office 365, the cloud-based Office program of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) will be able to create and edit Word, PowerPoint, and Excel spreadsheet documents on their iPads and will be able to save it on the OneDrive cloud storage system of the software giant. Non-subscribers will be able to access the read-only version of the Office on their iPads.