14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Office 16 is one of the most important products currently being developed by the Redmond-based tech giant, mostly because the Office division is now the number one cash cow of the company, so there’s no doubt that everyone wants to get this thing right when it comes out to the market.
As a result, Microsoft is not at all in a hurry when it comes to development work for the new version of the productivity suite, and according to more information shared by company executives at the TechEd Europe 2014 conference in Spain, Office 16 should hit the shelves in the second half of 2015.
General Manager of Office and Office 365 Marketing Julia White commented on the release date of the next Office during the event taking place in Barcelona, explaining that both the client and the server applications that are part of the Office 16 package should debut next year.
White thus finally put an end to rumors and confirmed that the client and the server Office apps would debut together, contrary to speculation that surfaced recently and pointed that Microsoft might actually introduce the client applications a bit earlier.
Already delayed?
Interestingly, pretty much everyone expected Office 16 to come out a bit earlier, most likely in the first months of the next year, but it appears that the company has already delayed the launch of the product.
Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley reports that Office 16 was initially scheduled to be released in spring 2015, but the company decided to push it back for a few months for undisclosed reasons.
Microsoft might have decided to delay the Office 16 launch for a few months because of the quickly approaching debut of Windows 10, the next operating system prepared by the company that’s also scheduled to see daylight in spring 2015.
Of course, bringing the two products at about the same time on the market wouldn’t be the best idea, so the company decided to stick to Windows 10’s release date and push back Office.
Office Touch almost ready
According to the aforementioned source, a touch-optimized version of Office is also very close to hitting the market, and the company is already providing testing builds to a number of engineers inside the company, but also to a very limited circle of external testers.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft might decide to push back the release of Office Touch for a few months as well, as the product would be specifically optimized for Windows 10, so bringing it out at about the same time with the new operating system would be the best choice.
Previous reports indicated that Office Touch could launch by year-end, but it turns out that Windows 10 is playing a key role in the whole release schedule and all the other debuts are held off to keep interest in the new OS as high as possible.