LOS ANGELES, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Microsoft said on Thursday that the debut of its latest software product, Office 2007, would be delayed until "early 2007."

    Earlier this year, the company said that it would wait to start selling Office until next January, along with the launch of its operating system Windows Vista, but now it said Office may not be ready for store shelves as planned.

    The software maker planned to finish the code for the revamped Office suite by the end of this year, two months behind its earlier schedule.

    Results from internal testing and feedback relating to the beta version of Office 2007 are not fully up to standard, the company said in a statement.

    The company is revising its development schedule "to deliver the system release by the end of 2006, with broad general availability in early 2007."

    It was not immediately clear how the Office delay would affect Microsoft's Vista plans or a potential joint product launch. Many outsiders have already said they expected the Windows update to also be delayed beyond January, but Microsoft has yet to acknowledge a further delay.

    Analysts noted that the delay in Office could hit some businesses hard, particularly those that signed volume license contracts late in 2003. Such contracts offer enterprises the right to any new versions of the product that come out over a period of time, typically three years.

    But now Microsoft has delayed the release date again, those enterprise customers, whose contracts would expire in 2007, could not get the new version of Office, according to Michael Silver, an analyst with IT market professional Gartner Group.

    "Each month they miss is another group of customers," Silver told the CNET news.

    Microsoft said that it wouldn't deliver either Office or Vista before the code for the two software systems reached certain quality levels. It said it expected to release the first, near-final release candidate of Windows Vista in the third quarter of this year.

    Earlier Thursday, the software giant said that it had nearly reached its self-imposed limit for testers of the current beta version of Windows Vista, and it planned to stop allowing new downloads after Friday. Enditem