Microsoft Office Freemium Apps Take iPad By Storm

It's always something of a big deal when major platforms cross over, and word about Microsoft apps showing up on Apple devices has been getting its share of discussion for a while now. But after a debut just yesterday of the Office for iPad set, the three major components of said set are making a huge splash on the iPad free application charts, forcing viewers to go down four slots to find an app that isn't Microsoft's.

When Word, Excel and PowerPoint hit the App Store, all three quickly shot up in popularity, reaching the first, second and third slots on the list respectively at last report. That's not too much of a surprise, really, as these were fairly eagerly anticipated apps that only just arrived. But where things got really interesting were in some of the peripheral effects. Microsoft's OneNote, which was already available in the App Store, got a refresh of its own, and subsequently found itself elevated to the number four slot on the list, meaning that at one point, Microsoft apps represented four out of the top five apps on the free iPad app list in the Apple App Store.

What's more, Microsoft's Apple success wasn't even limited to the iPad. Office Mobile on the iPhone also got a serious second wind, climbing the U.S. Lists with a fervor few could have foreseen and going from number 569 to number nine.

So what drove that kind of success? Some are pointing toward a rule change that changes how the app system used to work. Home users now get full functionality from the free app, while business users need to subscribe to the complete Office 365 plan. Admittedly, the functionality isn't quite full; there are some advanced features like document creation and editing that require users have an Office 365 plan, which means users will be limited largely to viewing the output of other peoples' Office 365 work, like documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Those who want to actually create content, meanwhile, will have to subscribe to Office 365 on some point, starting at $100 annually for the Office 365 Home Premium plan and going on from there depending on the level of use and the features desired.

Apple's iWork productivity system, meanwhile, dropped in the face of this response, with Pages dropping to 36, Keynote down to 50, and Numbers at 51.

What will be interesting here, however, is to see just how much extra in business the Office 365 Home Premium plan generates. There are alternatives to Microsoft Office out there, particularly for smaller businesses and for home users, many of which offer the same functionality as the popular Windows application. Yes, the downloads have been fast and furious for the new Microsoft apps, there's no denying that point. But how many of these downloads will lead to plan registries, and how many will lead to deletion when users discover that a hefty chunk of the apps' functionality is shot without an annual fee?

Only time will tell, ultimately, just how well the new Microsoft suite does on the open market. But it's clear that Microsoft has a good start here so far; the only real question left to answer will be what kind of business these downloads can generate, and if it's sustainable or a flash in the pan.