Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced last week that “Office 14 will not ship this year.
Microsoft officials have been careful not to provide a ship-date target for the next version of Office. However, last year, more than a few times execs slipped up and indicated Office 14 would ship in 2009. Just a month or two ago, Microsoft reps were telling corporate customers that Office 14 would ship in either late 2009 or early 2010.
Microsoft released an alpha version of Office 14 in January to selected customers. A first beta should ship this summer. Office not shipping until 2010 makes for an interesting launch season in the coming months.
Windows 7 is still tracking to be released to manufacturing by the third quarter of 2009, sources said. Will Microsoft delay the “official” launch of Windows 7 to time it with Office 14 in early 2010? Or has Microsoft decided it doesn’t really matter whether it launches Windows 7 and Office 14 together (even though many business users prefer to deploy new Windows and Office releases together)?
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