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Tim Cook welcomes Office for iPad – after all, Apple gets cut of in-app 365 subs

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Microsoft Office for iPad finally launched Thursday, bringing Word, Excel and PowerPoint to Apple’s popular tablet.

Apple boss Tim Cook was quick to express his delight at the news, posting a “welcome” message on his Twitter account.

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Soon after, in what looked like might develop into a full-blown tech-giant love-in, recently installed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tweeted back with a friendly “thanks,” while adding he was “excited to bring the magic of Office to iPad customers.”

iPad users who download the suite to their slate can use it to view documents, but in order to edit them an Office 365 subscription is required, costing $100 a year, or $10 a month.

While Cook will be pleased to see Microsoft’s powerful software finally made available to millions of iPad users (who’ll need to be running iOS 7 or above to get it working), he also knows it could be a big money spinner for the Cupertino company, as – in accordance with Apple’s iOS store terms of service – it’ll be taking a hefty 30 percent cut of every in-app subscription sale made. Of course, if a user chooses to buy a subscription direct from Microsoft’s website, or for less from Amazon, Apple won’t see any extra revenue.

Revenue boost

Microsoft, too, can expect to see plenty of extra cash roll in off the back of the launch, and will also be hoping to pull in a ton of new users to its ecosystem, as a Microsoft account needs to be created in order to use the software, with all Office files saved on its cloud-based OneDrive server.

Along with the Office for iPad launch, the Redmond-based computer company also announced it was making the iPhone version, which has been available since last year, free for use – that means you can now edit documents without the need for an Office 365 subscription.

For more on Microsoft’s roll out of its Office suite for iPad, check out Williams Pelegrin’s informative overview here.

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Trevor Mogg
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