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Craig Eisler, the recently appointed new general manager of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit (MacBU), explained that the decision not to release business software suite in the second-half of 2007 as planned was "quality driven". He now hopes to be have the software ready for the annual Macworld Expo, which takes place in the second week of January.

Eisler said that the delay has been caused by issues relating to the new Open Office XML (OOXML) file format and with creating the Universal code and optimising it for Intel Macs.

"Developing a Universal Office suite means coding for two separate platforms," <

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Eisler told MacNN. "The move from CodeWarrior to Xcode [Apple's OS X programming environment] is a significant milestone and meant that the development team at the Mac BU had to learn new tools to continue development of Office 2008 for Mac."

He added that the MacBU is working closely with Apple on Leopard compatibility but would not say whether Office would be employing any of the new technologies that October's OS X 10.5 release will introduce.

According to research firm NPD, sales of the Mac versions of Office rose by 72% between 2001 and 2006, at the same time that sales of Office for Windows grew by just 18%. For every "switcher" the Microsoft loses to the Mac platform, it is getting its money back in Office sales.

The MacBU this week released new beta converters to enable users of Office for OS X to open Word and PowerPoint files saved in the OOOXML format which was introduced with the release of Office 2007 for Windows. The delayed release of Office 2008 for the Mac has also pushed back the release of the finished converters, which, as before, are scheduled to be available six to eight weeks after the suite has been released.