Ballmer rules out Office 14 launch this year

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 24 Feb 2009 at 17:41

Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has told investors the company won't be launching Office 14 this year.

The company gave developers a brief glimpse of the next-generation Office at its Professional Developers Conference last year, raising hopes that it would be ready for launch in 2009.

However, in a strategic update for investors and analysts, Ballmer said that Office 14 "will not be this year".

Ballmer admitted that the Office business was suffering in the current economic climate. "Desktop productivity [is] very affected by PC sales," he said. "And on the corporate side, it's also affected by enterprise IT spend."

"This is our biggest business, our most profitable business, and it's a business that's not immune," he added.

However, he was quick to dismiss the threat posed by the free alternatives. "OpenOffice - we've been competing with it for a number of years, but we keep competing with it - it doesn't go away," Ballmer said. "We get challenged in education accounts from OpenOffice."

"We have the superior offering," he concluded.

The Microsoft CEO did admit the company had been forced to lower the cost of Office for consumers, however. "Price elasticity has been positive as far as we've pushed it," he maintained.

In fact, he suggested that consumer sales are of little significance to Microsoft's bottom line.

"About a third of Office units get bought by education - very small revenue realisation," he said. "About a third of Office units get bought by consumers and small businesses - pretty small revenue realisation. About a third of Office units get bought by larger businesses - very nice revenue realisation," he concluded, with no little gusto.