Why Microsoft Can’t Deliver Office for Mac on Time

It should come as no big surprise to Apple (AAPL) users that Microsoft’s (MSFT) Office 2008 for Mac is going to miss its "second-half" 2007 deadline and won’t be ready until January 2008, at the earliest.

Although the bundled suite of applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) made its first appearance on the Mac in 1989 and didn’t show up on Windows until the next year, it has since become a major Microsoft profit center, generating revenues — largely from the Windows versions — of nearly $12 billion in 2006.

And like the proverbial programmer who will walk through the desert in his socks to get to an installed base, Microsoft has lavished the Windows platform with upgrades and new features faster than users can keep up. Office 2007, launched with Vista in January, was Office for Windows No. 12. Office No. 14 is expected in 2009. (Like a skyscraper elevator, Microsoft is skipping No. 13).

The Mac, by contrast, lost market share for much of the 90’s and early ’00s and hasn’t had an upgrade since Office 2004 for the Mac. Meanwhile, the business unit that has been working on its successor — MacBU — is a computer industry joke. It advertises itself as "the largest, 100 percent, Mac-focused developer of Mac software outside of Apple itself," but has had little to show for it. Before she was unceremoniously sent to greener pastures in Microsoft’s entertainment division in June, general manager Roz Ho was best known for her lackluster Macworld performances and her cheery assurances that everything was still on track.

That could change now that the Mac’s market share is inching up. Hunterstrat picked up this interesting stat from the AP wire:

Sales of Office for Macs rose about 72 percent from 2001 to 2006,
compared with an increase of about 18 percent for Windows versions.
Sales of the Mac versions made up about 20 percent of dollars spent on
Office at U.S. retail stores and Web sites in 2006, up from 4 percent
in 2001. (link)

However Craig Eisler, who took over from Ho (and is MacBU’s fourth general manager in 10 years), seems no better at prognosticating — or making public pronouncements. Here’s what he wrote on Microsoft’s Mac Mojo blog on taking the job: 

"Microsoft and Apple are both great companies in their own right, and
working in Mac BU, I get to experience the best of both worlds. I am
super excited to help Mac BU continue to rock the house with Office
2008 for Mac and beyond." (link)

On June 14 — six weeks ago — MacNN reported Microsoft’s assurances that the division was "squarely focused on delivering Office 2008 in the second half of 2007,
and the placement of new general manager Craig Eisler does not signal
that the project is off track."

Today, as Ron Ziegler used to tell the White House press corps in the Nixon era, those statements are "inoperative."

“We switched to Intel, and Office changed file formats,” Eisler told Macworld.
“It was no one thing. This release was harder than most just because of
all those things happening at once.”

Although there are other –and perhaps better — word processors, spreadsheets, presentation programs etc. for the Mac, a functioning version of Office is critical to Apple’s efforts to break into the corporate workplace. IT departments need to be assured of interoperability before they can approve large purchases of Apple computers.

ADDENDUM: This just in from Edelman PR.

“Our number one priority is to deliver quality software to our customers and partners, and in order to achieve this we are shifting availability of Office 2008 for Mac to mid-January of 2008,” said Mac BU General Manager Craig Eisler. “We’re successfully driving toward our internal goal to RTM in mid-December 2007, and believe our customers will be very pleased with the finished product.”

RTM, I am informed, means "release to manufacturers."