Microsoft Office Coming to iOS and Android in November

Microsoft is planning to release both iOS and Android variants of its Office suite of products this fall, a new report says. The date matches closely to when the company is expected to release Windows 8 and the new version of Office.

Both the iOS and Android versions will be the “full Office suite.” Presumably that includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as tie-ins to Microsoft’s cloud services for Office. There are already OneNote and SkyDrive apps for iOS, and the former is on Android as well.

The report said it’s unclear whether Microsoft plans to release Office on iOS for just the iPad or for the iPhone and iPod Touch as well. A spokesperson for Microsoft declined to comment about the story.

There have been previous reports that Microsoft is working on Office for iPad, and The Daily said it had even seen the app first-hand. However, Microsoft said an alleged screenshot of the app is a fake. That report, from February, said the app was “weeks” away from release.

That timeframe was obviously incorrect, but creating an iPad version of Office is a logical move for Microsoft. The company is already a presence on Apple’s platform with its other iOS apps and Office for OS X. Office for iPad is also in the spirit of Microsoft’s general new direction toward making its software more platform-agnostic.

Microsoft has previously announced it was working on the next version of Office, and it describes “Office 15″ as the “most ambitious undertaking” yet from the company’s Office Division. The release is certainly timed to coincide with the launch of Windows 8, which will see new versions of Office tailored to Windows 8 tablets.