Pepsi or Coke? SkyDrive or Dropbox? These are decisions we must make as human beings. While we don’t have any inside info on which cola Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer prefers, we do know his preference in online storage. He says it’s SkyDrive all the way baby! Oh, and you shouldn’t hold your breath if you’re waiting for Office on the iPad.
CNET:
In a chat with BusinessWeek published yesterday, Microsoft’s head honcho touted his own company’s online audience over that of Dropbox.
SkyDrive had more than 200 million users as of October, according to comments from then Windows president Steven Sinofsky. DropBox reached 100 million users in November.
“Well, you’ve got to remember, 100 million sounds like a pretty small number to me, actually,” Ballmer told BusinessWeek. “We’ve got a lot more Office users. And actually if you even want to go to the cloud, we have a lot of Hotmail and SkyDrive users. I’m not beating on Dropbox. They’re a fine little startup and that’s great.”
SkyDrive does have one advantage over Dropbox for new Office 2013 users, Microsoft’s latest office suite allows users to save their documents to SkyDrive as easily as their local hard drive. You can then edit and view those documents on a computer without Office, via the online Office Web Apps.
It is true, Ballmer does have a record of underestimating the competition, remember this?
Ballmer also attacked Android in the past, saying you needed to be a computer scientist to use an Android phone.
So yeah, not a real great track record…
Ballmer was also asked about a product that has been grist for the rumor mill for the last year or so, Microsoft Office for the iPad.
Ballmer replied:
“I have nothing to say on that topic. We’re very glad with the product, very happy with the product that we’re putting in market. It makes sense on the devices like the Mac and the PC. We have a product that we think makes a lot of sense. We do have a way for people always to get to Office through the browser, which is very important. And we’ll see what we see in the future.”
Which is a nice little way of appearing to give an answer, while not really saying anything. Waffling, is the professional term, I believe.
So, what do you think readers? Is Microsoft wanting to pooh-poohOffice on the iPad in order to try and get their foot in the door of corporate America with the Surface? Will they eventually wake up and develop Office for iOS? Or is Office for Apple’s devices already debugged and ready to go at the first sign of Surfaces inevitable failure? Let us know in the comment section below.
