Mac users account for 20 percent of MS Office sales

According to NPD, via Microsoft-Watch.com, a full 20 percent of retail sales of Microsoft Office these days is the Macintosh version. And even more startling, 10 percent of the U.S. retail sales for Windows Vista Business and Ultimate also come from Mac users.

What's the deal? Macintosh users love MS Office. And ... OpenOffice is weak on Mac OS X, Apple's own iWork isn't making much of a dent ... and the student-teacher edition of MS Office retails for a very reasonable $149..

The article from Microsoft-Watch.com muses over whether Microsoft wants to be in the business of boosting a rival platform (OS X over Windows). What is unsaid is that Microsoft could play hardball and cease support for Office on the Mac, as it did for Internet Explorer years ago. But that would only strain the now-cosy relationship between Apple and Microsoft, one that pretty much splits the market between them both and chokes out other competitors in the software space.

No doubt, MS Office is a major factor in allowing Mac to be chosen for corporate and other office environments, but you can bet that Apple would pump a whole lot more juice into iWork if MS Office weren't available. Running Windows (and Office) in Boot Camp wouldn't be as desirable, especially for the non-technically minded.

In a way, it's a mutual-aid society -- both Microsoft and Apple hedge their bets and keep their businesses going with the kind of cooperation that keeps Microsoft's Office on the Mac, Apple's iTunes on Windows ... but curiously doesn't give Mac users the same MS e-mail program or Web browser. Again ... if Firefox weren't available, Safari would have to be better -- and be supported by the code at untold numbers of Web sites that currently only offer partial functionality to Safari users.

But when it comes to MS Office, the rock and hard place, between which both Apple and Microsoft are caught, is made less rocky and hard by all the money they use for profitable padding in between.