In just over a month, Office for iPad has picked up another 15 million downloads of its applications. Microsoft reported 12 million downloads in early April, and 27 million today.
That’s a massive figure. The apps have been out for 46 days, implying an average daily download rate of 587,000. It will be interesting to see where that number rests in another month — how much of pent-up demand has been met isn’t clear.
Word for iPad is still the most popular, currently ranked 11th in the United States, and in the top 100 in 109 countries. Google Docs, released after the Office for iPad suite, has fallen to 23rd in the U.S. on iPad.
Office for iPad is part of Microsoft’s cross-platform, cloud and mobile-focused business model. Financially, Word has lost some of its luster in the U.S. since launch. Here’s its grossing rank chart since its debut:
Productivity on tablets is a surprisingly nascent space, given that tablets themselves aren’t a particularly immature market segment. Frame the download number as part of the platform wars, as always: Microsoft gets more downloads on Apple’s iOS platform, bolstering OneDrive usage and Office 365 sales, which helps it combat Dropbox, Box, and Google. Make sense? Probably not, but Microsoft isn’t supporting iPad to help Apple if you catch my drift.