Office Finally Comes to the iPhone. But Does It Matter? - Wired

It only took six years, but as of today Microsoft Office Mobile is available on the iPhone–at least to those with a Microsoft Office 365 subscription. Microsoft announced today that Office 365 Home Premium and Office 365 ProPlus subscribers can download the package from iTunes immediately at no extra charge.

This is a stripped down, mobile-friendly version that runs in conjunction with Microsoft's cloud services. Microsoft says it has been "optimized for small screens" which seems like a good idea for something that runs on a small screen. You can view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents with Office Mobile, and it runs on iPhone 4 or later, the fifth generation iPod Touch, and third generation or better iPads. Having said that it's optimized for the iPhone 5 and although you can run it on an iPad, it's not designed for that and there is no proper iPad version yet.

The question is: does it matter anymore? Sure, when third party app developers first gained access to iOS five years ago, and before iOS and Android had come to so dominate the market, there was a demand for a mobile version of Office. But in the interim, people have found all kinds of other solutions, both on mobile and the desktop.

If you have an Office 365 subscription, or are considering getting one, this is yet another nice feature. But it's no longer the must-have software that it was half a decade ago.