Top iOS news of the week: Office iCloud, iPhone most popular, wired ethernet

Microsoft Office hits iCloud

The folks in Redmond updated Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for iPad and iPhone to allow storing, opening, and editing files straight from iCloud. The updates bring Office capabilities that rival those of Windows to iOS. This makes both devices, iPads in particular, even better to take to work.

The apps also received minor improvements in the updates.

Source: iMore

Lightning to ethernet cable allows wired connections to networks

With just a Lightning connector iOS devices can't be used with networks except over Wi-Fi, until now. The new Redpark Ethernet Cable allows plugging iOS devices into ethernet ports.

This isn't without caveat, however, as the cable only works with network stacks that use the proprietary RedSocket SDK. There are apps in the iTunes store that are compatible with the cable.

Source: ZDNet

Duet Display gets Windows support

The app that allows using iOS devices to be used as second monitors over a wired connection received Windows support this week. Previously Duet Display would only support using an iPad or iPhone as an external monitor for a Mac system.

Now you can use such a setup with Windows 7 and 8 computers.

Source: ZDNet

iPhone still most popular smartphone in the US

According to comScore, Apple's phone increased its lead in market share over Samsung by 1 percent, making it the most popular phone in the US. This share was categorized by vendor, so Apple's share with just the iPhones is significant since most competitors make lots of different phones.

Apple's standing was aided by Samsung's share dropping almost 1.5 percent.

Source: 9to5Mac