Microsoft takes the fight to competitors with free Office 365
In a surprise move, tech-giant Microsoft has announced it is making parts of its Office 365 software available to mobile workers on iPad, iPhone, and Android tablets for free. The new policy will allow users to make edits to documents from the comfort of their mobile offices, without needing to pay for a Microsoft Office 365 subscription. The move is the latest volley in Microsoft’s campaign against Google, Amazon and Apple, as CEO Satya Nadella attempts to win mobile users’ hearts and minds as part of the company’s ‘mobile first, cloud first’ strategy.
There is a slight catch; free users won’t have access to the full suite of services open to paying subscribers, but it’s still an encouraging move and one that shows Microsoft may finally be taking the threat posed by Google and Apple a little more seriously. Nadella has long been a proponent of making Microsoft 365’s applications available to mobile users; one of the first things he did upon taking office as Microsoft’s chief executive was to scrap the company’s previous, unwieldy mobile apps and replace them with bespoke new apps that took the needs of mobile users into careful consideration.
Former Ovum man and current employee at Jackdaw Research, Jan Dawson, welcomed the move, saying Microsoft are right not to charge mobile users, arguing that paying for the basic Microsoft Office services the app provides is unreasonable in many cases.
“Think about the kind of Office-related work you might want to do on an iPad,” he wrote on his blog, before going on to highlight that your average user will use the service to fix the odd typo and finesse a spreadsheet during their daily commute, not embark on the next great American novel, or write a TED talk.
“Is that functionality worth $70-$100 a year for most users?” he argues.
It is also worth considering that revenue for Microsoft’s consumer Office software has tracked much lower than business revenue. Not much of a surprise in itself, but interesting in that it shows Microsoft is willing to take a financial hit if it means staying on top of the technological heap.
