Honestly I think companies are (mostly) wasting their money porting desktop software to iPads. There's going to be niches where it makes perfect sense, but Office for the iPad is going to be a waste of money. Home users don't need it, business have laptops and desktop for those things, and Word is a poor note taking app of field work. To be fair I believe that the iPad is a poor note taking platform in general.

For specialized software, tailored to specific fields, with only the interaction elements for particular jobs the iPad can be a much better fit than a laptop. Those jobs however aren't generic enough that off shelf software make a ton of sense.

Doesn't really matter what you personally think, what matters is what companies think, because they have the data to back it up. Is it a waste of money or not? Office for iPad came in 2014 and still being quite actively developed so I think we can conclude the opposite of what you are saying.

Many examples of companies out there wasting $$$$ money for years on dead end projects.

So you think you know better than Microsoft and Adobe? Have you thought that they may know their customer base better than you do?

Unless we can see the numbers we don’t know if Microsoft profits from Office for the iPad. So I could be right for all you know.

Seeing that the only way that Microsoft makes money on Office for iPad is by selling O365 subscriptions -- same as Adobe with Creative Cloud -- having access anywhere is the value add.

Microsoft or Adobe can afford to make a billion dollar mistake.

Why would Microsoft keep developing a product for 7 years if there were no interest?

The Zune was launched in 2006 and discontinued in 2012. Why did that product last 6 years?

I’m not saying Office for iPad is pointless (I use it regularly, so quite the opposite!), but I do think it’s foolish to think an organisation the size of Microsoft’s doesn’t necessarily do things for obvious reasons. Individual incentives do not always lend themselves to data driven objectives.

Apple created the iPod in nine months by cobbling together third party components. The Zune wasn’t exactly a billion dollar investment.

I think it's unlikely that Office for iPad is a billion dollar investment either. It doesn't change that it might not actually generate any direct returns for them.

Loss-making strategies can ultimately be profitable in a broader sense (if it increases the stickiness of the product on it's primary platforms, keeping away competitors, a strategic moat).

I don't think there's any evidence either way to be able to make any assumptions about the level of interest of the product, and whether or not that justifies it's existence.

Not sure about Office, but iPad with Pencil seems popular with creative professionals, so for Adobe not to support it would open up opportunities to other software companies to Innovator's Dilemma them.