Free Office?! Have Microsoft Gone Mad!?

Microsoft earns a large proportion of it's vast revenue from the licensing and purchasing of it's Office software products.  It's an extremely big market for them.  Recent reports suggest they still have over 90% of the global productivity software market worldwide.  And it has been that way for some time.  However, recent decisions indicate that Microsoft are clearly worried by the threat from other software companies such as Google and Apple, who offer their productivity suites for free (Google Apps and Apple iWork apps).

Microsoft now offer free, fully-featured downloadable copies of Microsoft Office 365 Pro Plus to students across the world as long as the educational institution has a volume license for it's academic staff (which is the case in the majority of medium-large educational institutions).  Not only do they get a license to download Office on upto 5 devices, those devices can be cross-platform - including Mac OSX, IOS and Android versions.  Needless to say the majority of institutions are signing up to this offer, allowing their students access to it.  Sadly, Keele has made the decision not to, until demand from students is quantified.

And just today, Microsoft have announced that the mobile versions of their Office apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices are now available to use free of charge.  Previously a subscription to Office 365 was needed to allow editing of documents on these devices, but in another apparent change of heart, Microsoft have now withdrawn that caveat and you now just need a Microsoft account (which is free).

In a similar strange move, Microsoft also signed a partnership agreement with Dropbox to allow their cloud storage apps direct access to its Office applications.  This means you can now store and load documents using Dropbox and not just Microsoft's OneDrive.

This is great news for PC users with an iPad.  Although Apple and Google apps are great, they do not play well with the traditional PC productivity platform of Windows and Microsoft Office documents.  Editing Office document on an iPad using Apple or Google apps is often a frustrating affair despite the promise of compatibility.  Google Docs app for iPad for instance is little more than a text editor, with the options for rich formatting or even the simplest of features (e.g. a table) noticeably missing.

So have Microsoft just handed their rivals a massive productivity boost by making the iPad more useful?  Yes.  Is that bad for business?  Not necessarily, as it allows fans of their software to continue to be fans when using non-windows devices.  That helps to keep that global market share looking very healthy...

Links: 

Free Office for Mobile Devices
Free Office for Students