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No Microsoft Office for iOS, Android until fall 2014?

An alleged road map for Microsoft Office updates in the next two years pinpoints improvements for Windows Blue, Office for Mac, and more.

Mary Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
Mary Jo Foley
3 min read
Microsoft

An alleged road map for Microsoft's coming Gemini wave of Office updates, if accurate, indicates Microsoft's Office for iOS and Android -- as well as Outlook for Windows RT -- might not happen as soon as many had hoped for and expected.

A source of mine shared what appears to me to be a real road map for Gemini.

It kicks off with Gemini wave 1.0, which includes the Blue metro-style/Windows Store complements to the core set of Office products -- namely, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. From what I've heard previously, these four apps will be more touch-centric and will work on Windows 8 and Windows RT. They will supplement, not replace, the desktop/Win32 versions of these apps that already exist. These apps will be made available to customers by October 2013, according to the purported road map.

The 1.5 wave of the Gemini updates is set for April 2014, the road map indicates. This is when the Office team will deliver the next version of Mac Office and an update to Office for Windows Phone. April 2014 also is listed as when Microsoft plans to make Office customized for LSX hardware. LSX offers a "large-screen experience," i.e., Perceptive Pixel large-screen, multitouch systems.

There's one other interesting projected milestone for April 2014: Office RT. I'm thinking this is a refresh of the desktop version of Word RT, Excel RT, PowerPoint RT, and OneNote RT -- the desktop versions of the current Office 2013 RT suite that Microsoft ported to ARM and bundled with Windows RT. I'm doubtful this will be other Office apps ported to Windows RT, even though one of my contacts claimed recently that the Office team already completed ports of most, if not all, of its Office apps to ARM.

One app that seemingly won't be part of the spring 2014 update, if this road map is real and accurate, is Outlook RT. It appears Microsoft may be holding back the Outlook RT application until the fall (October) of 2014 for some reason -- despite that this app is in the midst of being tested privately, both inside and outside Microsoft. I really hope this is wrong and that Microsoft has decided to speed up delivery of this one, given the Mail app on Windows RT is still nothing to write home about, even though Microsoft did make some needed improvements to the Windows 8/Windows RT Mail app in March.

Also on the road map for fall 2014 is what's listed as iOS/Android support for Office. One would assume this is the expected and widely rumored Office for iPad release. It could, however, be Office for iPhone and Android phones, given that it's not listed on the road map as being tablet-specific.

Rumors about Microsoft's plans to deliver Office for iOS and Android have been circulating for more than a year. Microsoft representatives have never outright denied these apps were in development. A number of us Microsoft watchers heard from our various sources that these apps were on track to be delivered by early- to mid-2013.

The most recent rumors/expectations have been that Microsoft may be making these mobile iOS/Android versions of Office available as part of an Office 365 subscription of some kind. The alleged road map makes no mention of an Office 365/subscription tie-in. It only mentions "iOS/Android" as a Gemini fall 2014 deliverable.

In sum, this is what the alleged road map indicates:

  • Gemini wave 1.0, October: Windows Blue app updates.
  • Gemini wave 1.5, April 2014: Office for Mac, Office RT refresh, Perceptive Pixel support, Windows Phone support refresh.
  • Gemini wave 2.0, October 2014: Outlook RT, Office for iOS/Android.

I do not know how old this purported road map is, but my contact indicated it was likely current as of the start of this year. I asked Microsoft Office to comment, but the company declined to do so.

"We don't have any information to share about the next set of updates to Office," a spokesperson said.

One last thing to keep in mind: Even when Microsoft commits to ship targets in road maps, things can and often do change. Demand (or lack thereof) can result in planned products releasing earlier or later than the planners anticipate.

This story originally appeared as "Microsoft's Office for iOS, Android: Not until fall 2014?" on ZDNet.