Julia White – Microsoft Office General Manager

At a recent Tech Ed Europe conference held in Barcelona Julia White, GM of Office and Office 365, revealed that Microsoft Corp.’s Office 16 will be launched a little behind the previously planned date of Spring next year. It’s now reported that the launch will come in the latter half of the year, although no month was specified.

Speaking on Microsoft’s Channel 9, White explained that Office 16 will be available in Beta sometime later in 2015, but first it will be put through a testing process that includes TAP (Technology Adoption Program). The pre-Beta TAP stage of construction and testing is usually reserved for specific cooperate customers only, and then in Beta the product will usually become available to the public. As Microsoft is scheduled to hold another Tech Ed conference at the beginning of May 2015 in Chicago IL, that will include keynote speakers from the Office team, it’s thought that the official launch date will be announced then.

Office 16 client and server apps will come out at the same time, White added, which may come as a blow to those who had expected Windows applications to be released much earlier. She suggested that November will be the release date for a touch version of Office suite for Android tablets.

A few days ago, alleged screenshots of Microsoft’s Office for Mac were leaked on the Chinese website cnBeta. Rumors suggest that the release date will be in May 2015. While Windows Office 15 was released two years ago, Mac users have been waiting four years for an updated edition of Windows.