14 DAY TRIAL // ValueAct Capital has become one of the top 20 Microsoft shareholders, thanks to the recently purchased $2 billion (€1.5 billion) stake it took control of, so the company has already started thinking about the tech giant’s future.
ValueAct CEO Jeffrey Ubben confirmed at an investor conference in New York that Microsoft should put the focus on cloud-based services, while also trying to make the most of the Office productivity suite, which is currently considered one of its most profitable products.
According to Reuters, Ubben explained that Microsoft should make Office available for non-Windows users too, so Linux, iOS, and Android flavors should be developed as soon as possible.
Microsoft is reportedly pondering such versions of Office, but none of them might arrive sooner than 2014. In addition, the company is also believed to be working on a Metro flavor of the suite that would be aimed at Windows 8 users who would be allowed to create and edit documents from the Modern UI of the new operating system.