Microsoft launches new Office for iPad features, still dominates on Apple's home turf

Today Microsoft bestowed upon us an update to Office for iPad, introducing a series of new features that make the mobile productivity suite a bit more like its desktop counterpart.

The updates — we’ll get to them in a moment — are a bit boring, but they may encourage a noteworthy trend: Microsoft’s remarkable ability to show Apple up in its own App Store.

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Yes, in direct competition with Apple’s prettier productivity apps, Microsoft has proven in the past four months that Office has legs on the top-selling tablet, if data from app tracking service App Annie is accurate.

According to App Annie, Microsoft Word for iPad holds the number one spot among top productivity apps in the U.S., and ranks at number 11 among top apps overall in the U.S.. Apple’s Pages, by comparison, ranks number seven in productivity and barely ranks within the top 250 apps overall.

Here are the stats in pictures:

Microsoft Word for iPad U.S. App Store stats

Pages for iPad U.S. App Store stats

With today’s update, Microsoft touts that PowerPoint for iPad users can now activate “Presenter View” when sharing presentations to another screen. PowerPoint also now supports video importing directly from the iPad’s camera roll. On Excel, PivotTables are now more interactive, and across all apps (even Word), PDF exporting now works for all users — paid and unpaid.