Is Apple Planning to Debut iWork '11 in the Mac App Store?

If you’re a solutions provider in the Apple market, you might have a few customers wondering when iWork ’11 is scheduled for release. Once upon it time iWork was launched simultaneously with iLife, but iLife ’11’s announcement came and went with no word on when iWork ’11 would arrive. Until now: Indirectly and independently confirmed, iWork ’11 will arrive when the Mac App Store does, in January 2011. Is this new go-to-market strategy bad news for resellers?

9to5Mac has received tip-offs from Apple Store employees that iWork ’09 is no longer on shelves and new copies aren’t being sent their way. What’s more, a YouTube video detailing an online-help-chat session with an Apple employee hints that iWork ’11 will be coming soon, and let’s not forget that during Apple’s October 2010 Event, Apple’s Pages application was chosen as the demoed downloaded app from the Mac App Store. (9to5Mac claims that Ingram Micro’s supplies are low, but there’s no link to proof, and it also claims that Amazon.com is out of stock, which is completely erroneous.)

What does that mean for you, the reseller? If iWork is no longer available in a physical medium, it’s much more difficult to resell or package with Apple hardware. Although this is all speculation, if Apple takes a majority of its software products to the App Store, it could change the way VARs work with Apple.

That’s not to say a physical version won’t be available. Apple could just be waiting to show off with iWork ’11 and the Mac App Store before they set it loose through the traditional channel. Still, it’s worth thinking about, especially since this productivity suite directly affects business users.

In the meantime, we’ll keep our eyes and ears open for the launch.

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