Microsoft surprised everyone on Wednesday by making its Office tools available on Android and iOS mobile devices free of charge.
The software giant aims to keep people "hooked" by using Microsoft Office Excel, PowerPoint and Word. All can now be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play Store without having to pay for anything, except for businesses. Unfortunately, businesses are still required to purchase an Office 365 subscription to edit documents that are stored on OneDrive for Business or Dropbox for business, according to The Verge.
"There's still premium value that we'll add on top of that," wrote Microsoft's head of Office marketing Michael Atalla. "There will still be subscription value, most clearly and easily identifiable in the commercial space, but also in the consumer space around advanced authoring, analysis, presentation, and unlimited storage with OneDrive."
The updates will be rolled out today for both Android and Apple platforms. The changes ensure that consumers can be productive, regardless of the devices they have. The Office Mobile for iPhone app will also be removed from the App Store today, and will be replaced with a new app. Microsoft collaborated with Apple to make sure that the new version is optimized for the latest iPhone models, Venturebeat reported.
Microsoft product manager Amanda Lefebvre confirmed that the apps are "built on the same codebase as the iPad apps."
The Wall Street Journal did a review of the iPad experience. Microsoft did it right in making file editing and manipulation less complicated and equipping it with finger-friendly buttons and menus. However, the test also revealed a bug wherein the system failed to sync the latest updates made on the files and documents. A Microsoft spokesperson explained that the sync failure might be because iPads auto-save less often, but the company is already working to improve the function.
"Our initial release focused on delivering file syncing and co-authoring functional parity with desktop Office. Now that we have delivered on that baseline (and hundreds of other end-user features), we will be focusing on the next wave of file improvements," the spokeswoman said.
