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Office has a huge amount of legacy. I get that porting it to iOS had to be done. Microsoft provides Office for the Mac desktop. But porting to Android is a whol
by igravious 13y ago
Office has a huge amount of legacy. I get that porting it to iOS had to be done. Microsoft provides Office for the Mac desktop. But porting to Android is a whole other story. Porting it to Android validates Android as a platform like nothing else. It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day, it gave the platform instant enterprise-cred whereas before it really only had hacker-cred and FOSS evangelist support despite the knowledge that IBM was spending a whole bunch of money on it internally.
You're right that Nokia has a track record of supporting and developing across multiple OSs but how has this turned out for them in the long run?
Samsung are right to keep their options open but I think they should go the Amazon/Nokia route and differentiate on top of Android. Having said that Samsung is probably more than large enough and has a large enough R&D budget to pursue multiple strategies.
It's really hard to see how this plays out. I thought we'd never ever see the day when Microsoft developed for Linux or Android unless as a bridge to their own world. I thought past history, pride, lack of trust, wrong momentum, or whatever would stymie them from making the transition. If I were a beige box manufacturer I would be extremely concerned that the Microsoft may move on from phones and tablets to laptops or even PCs, now that hell has frozen over you never know what they might do.
- Touche 13y ago> But porting to Android is a whole other story. Porting it to Android validates Android as a platform like nothing else. I feel like the hundreds of millions of devices that ship each quarter is enough of a validation. They're not waiting around saying "I wonder if this Android thing takes off".
- JunkDNA 13y ago>It'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day I think Microsoft should look less to Apple and Google for inspiration and more to Oracle. There are a lot of similarities between the two companies: enterprise focus, pure software company, lots of legacy applications to support, etc...
- ZeroGravitas 13y agoCurrently, not being on iOS is invalidating Micrsosoft Office. It's miraculous how many things in stodgy IT Departments had to change shortly after the CEO got an iPad and iPhone. Probably a lot of those people felt they were secure with their Windows desktop only solutions, turns out they were wrong.
- untog 13y agoIt'd be equivalent to Oracle releasing their DB server for Linux way back in the day I'm hesitant about that comparison - server software and desktop software have little in common. Oracle could demand what OS it ran on because the server was likely doing little else - a desktop machine needs to run a wide variety of programs.