Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has confirmed that it wants in on the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad. Consumers have been able to use Microsoft’s key Office programs on the Mac, but now it is official: Office for iPad is here.

Satya Nadella’s press briefing on Thursday indicated that the new Office for iPad will be available for download right away. This had been rumored in recent days, and it helps to propel shares on the rumor. Now it is a fact.

The move is a so-called freemium, a free download, for Office 365 subscribers. The reality is that this is potentially huge news on the surface. Now we have to see the functionality and actual interoperability of it before we can say what this does for the company’s subscription revenues.

Tech shares continued their decline on Thursday, and Apple shares were down 0.6% at $536.20 and Microsoft shares down 0.45% at $39.61 in mid-afternoon trading.

We could say more, but sometimes less is more. At least this makes life easier for some of us who run businesses.

Obviously this is not great news for the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and Dell. This makes the iPad just that much easier to use for Windows fans. In fact, HP shares were down 1.5% at $31.86 at the same time. That being said, HP shares were actually up from where they were earlier in the day before the Office for iPad was confirmed.

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