Microsoft Office for iPad crosses 27 million downloads within two months of launch

It has been barely two months since Microsoft launched Office for iPads . And if the downloads are anything to go by, then it seems to have become an instant hit among iPad loyalists.   According to a Paul Thurrot, Microsoft, at its TechEd customer conference, announced that Office for iPads has now been downloaded more than 27 million times since its launch in March. That comes to around 587,000 downloads every day. The increase in installs is more than double the **12 million downloads the app notched in its first month** .    Microsoft released Office for the iPad nearly four years after Apple launched the groundbreaking tablet. It includes the Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps that will be familiar to both business and everyday people. On-the-go business types will probably love the functionality of the Office apps and eagerly add their iPads to their existing Office 365 subscriptions.   Microsoft’s new apps are free, but you need an annual subscription to Microsoft’s Office 365, which costs between $70 and $100 depending on the version, to do more than just read documents. Presentations, spreadsheets or documents created are saved on Microsoft servers using its OneDrive online data storage service and can be access from a range of devices.   Rather than stripping down Office to a super-basic version, like it did with the smartphone software, Office for iPad has been customised for the tablet user and includes many of the bells and whistles of the desktop version. The popularity of the of the app can be gauged from the fact that Office is among the most downloaded apps on App Store  .