At an event meant to feature its latest iPad
tablet computing devices, Apple on Tuesday took aim at one of the biggest and
seemingly unassailable businesses of its rival Microsoft, its Office software
for tasks like word processing and spreadsheets.
Apple said iWork, a set of applications for
Macs, iPads and iPhones that essentially duplicates what Microsoft’s Office
offers customers, would be free to anyone who bought a new Macintosh computer
or mobile device from Apple. Each Apple app used to cost $10 apiece. The
latest version of the Macintosh operating system, Mavericks, will also be free.
The pricing maneuver was perhaps the lone
surprise at an Apple new media event here at the Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts. As expected, Apple souped up its iPads with faster processors and zippier
Internet connections.
The company upgraded its iPad Mini, the smaller
tablet, with a higher-resolution, 7.9-inch display. The full-size iPad, with a
9.7-inch screen, was renamed the iPad Air, because it has a slimmer design and
has lost some weight. The smaller iPad starts at $400 and the bigger iPad will
cost $500. Both will ship in November.
“This is our biggest leap forward ever in a
full-sized iPad,” said Philip W. Schiller, senior vice president for marketing
at Apple.
With its free software offering, Apple is
capitalizing on strong growth in tablet computing sales and Microsoft’s
reluctance to offer Office for the iPad.
Tablets are devouring the PC market, which has
long been Microsoft’s playing ground. About 120 million tablets were shipped in
2012, nearly seven times as many as in 2010, when the first Apple iPad was
released, according to Gartner, a market research company. IDC, another
research company, predicts that sales of tablets will surpass those of PCs in
the fourth quarter of this year and on an annual basis in 2015.
So far, Microsoft has had little success in
that growing market. Its attempts to sell tablets have been failures, and
Windows 8, which it has marketed as a software system for tablets and PCs, has
gotten a chilly reception. What’s more, Microsoft still
charges $120 for people who want to upgrade from the older Windows 7 system to
Windows 8.
That shift to mobile devices and low-cost
software is why Microsoft is trying to shift from being a traditional software
company into one that sells Internet services and devices, said Ross Rubin, an
independent consumer technology analyst for Reticle Research. The company could
reduce the upfront price for its software and charge people more over time for
the services through subscriptions. And with the release on Tuesday of
Microsoft’s new Surface tablets, the company is more aggressively marketing the
online services available for it, like SkyDrive, a service
for storing files on the Internet.
Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer,
said recently that the company would bring a version of Office to the iPad and
other touch devices, but the company has not said when that will be. It sells
an annual subscription to Office 365 on other devices for $100 a year.
Asked about Apple’s decision to give away its
iWork apps, Heather Knox, a spokeswoman for Microsoft Office, said in a
statement that a Web-based version of Office was the best free alternative to
Microsoft’s traditional Office applications. “They extend the Office experience
you know and love with anytime, anywhere online editing and collaboration,” Ms.
Knox said.
The new iPad Mini also gained a high-resolution
Retina display. The new tablet costs $400 — $70 more than the previous iPad
Mini. But Apple said it would continue selling the older iPad Mini without a
Retina display for $300.
The iPad Air is about 20 percent thinner than
the previous iPad and weighs one pound, down from 1.4 pounds. Both new iPads
will include new chips, called A7 and M7, which Apple introduced last month in
its latest high-end iPhone. The A7 is a faster processor with a new
architecture that makes it better at multitasking. The M7 is dedicated to
sensing movement, which could allow for new capabilities in software or games
that incorporate motion, like a car racing game.
The iPads have an improved antenna system for
faster Wi-Fi connections. They will come in white and silver and in black and
gray, similar to the colors of the iPhone 5S (though the iPads will not come in
white and gold like the iPhone). The iPad Air goes on sale on Nov. 1, but the
new Mini will ship later in November.
The new iPads do not include the fingerprint
sensor technology, TouchID, that Apple introduced in the iPhone 5S. Analysts
say that may be because parts are in limited supply, as the iPhone 5S is
selling so quickly.
The Mac computers have taken the back seat of
Apple’s business, but the company also released upgrades for some of its Mac
hardware on Tuesday. The MacBook Pro notebooks with Retina displays are now
thinner and faster, with better battery life. The 13-inch version will cost
$1,300, down $300 from its original price, and the 15-inch model will cost
$2,000, down $200 from the original price.
Apple also said the high-end Mac desktop
computer, the Mac Pro, which was introduced in June, will begin shipping in
December, for $3,000.
Apple is No. 1 in the tablet market with about
a 32 percent share, according to IDC. But the company faces fierce competition
from companies like Amazon, Samsung Electronics and Google, whose tablets
undercut the iPad in price. Samsung, the No. 2 tablet maker, is quickly gaining
traction, with 18 percent of the market in the second quarter, compared with
7.6 percent in the period a year earlier, according to IDC.
Smartphones are still more popular than
tablets: Gartner predicts manufacturers will ship one billion smartphones and
184 million tablets this year.
But Carolina Milanesi, an analyst for Gartner,
said she expected smaller tablets to continue gaining in popularity as the
smartphone market becomes saturated.
“We expect this holiday season to be all about
smaller tablets as even the long-term holiday favorite — the smartphone — loses
its appeal,” Ms. Milanesi said.
