Google unveils Slides presentation app for iOS

Search giant Google Inc. added a brand new mobile app for iOS today, the Google Slides. For starters, the first mobile app version of Google Slides was launched on Android mobile operating system two months ago.

Google Slides is apparently the company’s take on Microsoft Office PowerPoint. The Slides app is available for free in the iTunes App Store and goes along with Google Drive’s other Docs and Sheets apps, which have been available for a while now.

Slides is designed to allow users to create, edit, and collaborate with other users on presentations from the iPhone, iPad, or desktop. The app allows users to create new presentations or edit existing presentations, and it's possible to share presentations with others as well as work on a single presentation with multiple people at the same time. Like other Google apps, Slides saves automatically and works offline.

“No one wants to worry about what format their documents are in or whether they have the right app on their phone or tablet. Whether you’re working on a file originally created in Microsoft Office, or one created in Docs, Sheets or Slides on an Android phone, tablet, iPhone, iPad, Chromebook or laptop, with or without an internet connection, you can do all this and more with Google Apps,” wrote Google software engineer Li-Wei Lee in the blog post.

Google is in fact aiming at two targets simultaneously. On one hand it indicates it willingness to make its platform compatible with other platforms to improve productivity, it also shows that it is positioning its apps as an alternative for commercial establishments looking to break away from unused Office subscription. Google is aware of the fact that 80%of the Office licenses are used sparingly by and many users only working with Office for a few minutes a day or even not at all.

Launching its new Google Slides app for the iPhone to complement Google Docs and Google Sheets, the search engine giant has positioned itself in a better position to compete in a much more effective way against the commercially successful and business oriented iOS software suites. With Slides, Google now offers apps for creating word-based documents, spreadsheets, and presentations directly on the iPhone.