False dichotomy

>> However you can't sell for profit Office suites as tools to create
>> standalone documents anymore (at least not to informed users, as corporate
>> purchasers are). 
> What? You tell that to Microsoft's Office division, which beat records
> (20% up) again this year.

Because the Office division is not selling tools focused on creating standalone documents
anymore. They sell VBA automation. They sell desktop-to-server solutions. Strip this and you
won't find a lot of entities ready to pay the price Microsoft asks just for the capability to
create .doc and .xls documents (with no macros, no data feeds in and no data feeds out)

> This is too simplistic. Other players (Adobe, Quicken) are making lots of
> money on the desktop.

And they got there when? Before Microsoft consolidated its desktop hold. Had they started
later they wouldn't have targeted the desktop. Sure there are interesting things to do
server-side, but that's not the reason why no one is trying to do new desktop apps anymore.

> But they are also famous for trying many times before getting things
> right, so maybe this time they will succeed.

Going XML and modern programming language is helping them a lot. Sun and IBM would not be so
agitated otherwise. Their pure Office suite revenue is minimal