Microsoft's next surprise is free Office for iPad, iPhone, and Android | The Verge
November 6, 2014
Microsoft's Office suite for iPad, iPhone, and Android is now free. In a surprise move, the software giant is shaking up its mobile Office strategy to keep consumers hooked to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Starting today, you'll no longer need an Office 365 subscription to edit documents or store them in the cloud. The move comes just days after Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with Dropbox to integrate the cloud storage service into Office across desktop, mobile, and the web. You can now download Office for iPad and store all your documents on Dropbox without paying Microsoft anything at all. Microsoft is also releasing a brand new iPhone app today, alongside a preview of Office for Android tablets, all with Dropbox integration...
The key here appears to be a strategic move by Microsoft to keep Office competition out of the mobile space. It's all too easy for competitors to build rival products and ship them for free on iPad, iPhone, and Android, offering premium features on top. Microsoft's Office suite is dominant, which also means it's ripe for disruption. If there's a rival Office iPad app that's free and easy to use, that could tempt consumers away from their preconceived reliance on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. CloudOn, a gesture-based app for editing Office documents, has seen some early success here. Apple also offers its own iWork apps on iPad at no extra cost, and several rivals, including the maker of the popular Paper iPad app, are emerging to threaten Office on mobile. The nightmare situation for Microsoft is that consumers realize soon that they don't need Office to create their resume or personal documents, so why should they pay for it on a smartphone or tablet where they're used to getting free apps....
November 6, 2014
Microsoft's Office suite for iPad, iPhone, and Android is now free. In a surprise move, the software giant is shaking up its mobile Office strategy to keep consumers hooked to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Starting today, you'll no longer need an Office 365 subscription to edit documents or store them in the cloud. The move comes just days after Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with Dropbox to integrate the cloud storage service into Office across desktop, mobile, and the web. You can now download Office for iPad and store all your documents on Dropbox without paying Microsoft anything at all. Microsoft is also releasing a brand new iPhone app today, alongside a preview of Office for Android tablets, all with Dropbox integration...
The key here appears to be a strategic move by Microsoft to keep Office competition out of the mobile space. It's all too easy for competitors to build rival products and ship them for free on iPad, iPhone, and Android, offering premium features on top. Microsoft's Office suite is dominant, which also means it's ripe for disruption. If there's a rival Office iPad app that's free and easy to use, that could tempt consumers away from their preconceived reliance on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. CloudOn, a gesture-based app for editing Office documents, has seen some early success here. Apple also offers its own iWork apps on iPad at no extra cost, and several rivals, including the maker of the popular Paper iPad app, are emerging to threaten Office on mobile. The nightmare situation for Microsoft is that consumers realize soon that they don't need Office to create their resume or personal documents, so why should they pay for it on a smartphone or tablet where they're used to getting free apps....
