Office 2013 will not run on Windows XP or Vista. This, Microsoft confirmed yesterday that the new Office 2013 will not run on older PCs powered by Windows XP or Vista. Office 2013, which preview released this week, only supports Windows 7 and 8. XP is still the most widely-used Windows version (although Net Applications says that could change this month).
CEO Ballmer said during today’s presentation that Microsoft Office is “the flagship application from Microsoft” and “the most important application” the company sells.
Windows 7 does not yet have a majority of all Windows PCs: In June, it powered 45.1% of all PCs that went online, said Net Applications. Windows 8, which has not been released except in preview formats, accounted for just 0.2% of all copies of Windows.
By comparison, Windows 7 is fighting its two brothers quite well but hasn’t sent them to the history books. With a 45.09 percent share in the Windows world, it is currently the only shipping version supporting Office 2013 and so far it’s as good as it gets.
Microsoft announced that Windows 8 will release to manufacturing in early August. Volume-license subscribers will get it right away, while everyone else will wait until October. That doesn’t leave much room for it to gain ground to justify eliminating Windows XP, for instance. The risk reminds of Internet Explorer 9, which doesn’t support XP. As such, IE9 isn’t gaining browser usage share (just 17.96 percent in June, according to NetApps).
Microsoft is locking Office 2013 into less than 50 percent of the Windows user base, which can be called a rather stupid move.
