I've been playing with Microsoft's newly acquired calendar application, Sunrise. Really nice interface/look and feel. I can see it becoming my default calendar app. But, being brutally honest, that's about all it is, a nice interface. It doesn't seem to add major functionality increases over other calendar applications, including the iPhone and Android defaults.

But Microsoft has reportedly paid $100 million for it.

While it's an app I really like, I can't for the life of me see the value in this. It's a free app, and there's no ads or any other obvious revenue stream. I appreciate if I'm not the customer I'm probably the product, but again, I don't see how Microsoft is getting all that much value out of my standard sort of calendar entry ("Coffee w John", "Pick kids up at 3.30" and "Rubbish bin up tonight"). They might perhaps (if they're smart) glean that I like coffee (or perhaps John), I have children and I produce rubbish. But where does Microsoft even serve ads?

And, I'm not sure that calendar apps are ever going to be hugely popular. Taking my family as a reference - none are particularly tech savvy, but all of them have smartphones. None of them would even consider installing a calendar app. The marginal improvement Sunrise offers over the default apps means that they just wouldn't see the point (even if it had occurred to them to look at calendar app alternatives). My instinct is that the only people that are going to install this type of app are the geeks (including me). But while we're early adopters of new and cool things, that cuts both ways. The next time an ever better calendar app comes along we're the type to ditch the status quo and throw out lot in with the cool new kid.

I can see that Microsoft might integrate it into their Office 365/Lumia offerings, but again, no-one comparing Office 365 and Google Apps is going to base their decision on the prettiness of the calendar offering. There is also talk of making it a part of Cortana, but again, let's face it, no-one but geeks is going to choose iPhone, Android or Windows Phone on the basis of it's virtual assistant.

Maybe Microsoft is buying the company for it's engineers or something?

Am I missing something or does this price seem way overinflated?