Office for iPhone move to drive subscriptions

The announcement of Office 365 for Apple's phone should raise revenues for Redmond -- but what about resellers?

Resellers are welcoming the arrival of Microsoft Office for the iPhone, a version of the popular productivity suite built for the Apple smartphone as an extension of the Office 365 cloud service.

Many VARs are promoting the iPhone version as a way to drive sales of Office 365 subscriptions. To gain access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Skydrive on the iPhone, users or businesses must have subscriptions.

Analysts see Microsoft's move as purely about raising awareness of its products to non-Microsoft mobility customers. By extending Office to the iPhone, Microsoft is increasing the utility of the mobile devices as an extension of conventional Windows-based PCs.

What Microsoft isn't doing is making Office available for the iPad or myriad Google Android-based tablets. Analysts suspect Microsoft is holding back on a broad tablet strategy until Windows-based tablets are more widely adopted.

Is Windows losing ground?

Windows 8, released in October 2012 and designed for mobile devices, has been slow to gain market interest. Some analysts say Windows 8 is selling even more slowly than the ill-fated Windows Vista.

But this isn't about Windows; Office is a bigger money-maker for Microsoft nowadays. What Microsoft has done, brilliantly or accidentally, is give providers something else to bark about and customers to chew on.

The average business is built around Windows and Office as its core PC applications.

Consider that at least half their employees own an iPhone.

The compelling argument to switch to Office 365 is extending access to critical documents beyond the PC.

While critics say Office 365 is more expensive than buying single-machine licences, the value of extended productivity is a compelling reason for customers to adopt the cloud service.

The downside: Microsoft still needs to work on the compensation for resellers selling Office 365. Many have told Channelnomics the numbers don't work in their favour.

Microsoft only provides a scant, single-digit share of the subscription after the first year.

As part of our special editorial relationship, CRN is republishing this article from Channelnomics