Apple targets Microsoft, takes on MS Office with free iWork apps

SAN FRANCISCO: At an event meant to feature its latest iPad tablet computing devices, Apple on Tuesday took aim at one of rival Microsoft’s biggest and once unassailable businesses, its Office software for tasks like word processing and spreadsheets.

 Apple said iWork, a set of applications for Macs, iPads and iPhones that essentially duplicates what Microsoft’s Office offers customers, will be free to anyone who buys a new Macintosh computer or mobile device rom Apple. Each Apple app used to cost $10 apiece. The latest version of the Macintosh operating system, Mavericks, will also be free.The pricing maneuver was perhaps the lone surprise at an Apple new media event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. As expected, Apple souped up its iPads with faster processors and zippier Internet connections.The company upgraded its iPad Mini, the smaller tablet, with a higher-resolution, 7.9-inch display. The full-size iPad, with a 9.7-inch screen, was renamed the iPad Air, because it has a slimmer design and has lost some weight. The smaller iPad starts at $400 and the bigger iPad will cost $500. Both will ship in November.

 “This is our biggest leap forward ever in a full-sized iPad,” said Philip W. Schiller, senior vice president for marketing at Apple.

 With its free software offering, Apple is capitalizing on dramatic growth in tablet computing sales and Microsoft’s reluctance to offer Office for the iPad.

Tablets are devouring the PC market, which has long been Microsoft’s playing ground. About 120 million tablets were shipped in 2012, nearly seven times as many as in 2010, when the first Apple iPad was released, according to Gartner, a market research company. IDC, another research company, predicts that sales of tablets will surpass those of PCs in the fourth quarter of this year and on an annual basis in 2015.

 AKANKSHA SHANU

PGDM 1st sem.