In its ongoing push to get more people to use its office mobile apps, Microsoft has now made its entire Office suite, available for free on Android.
And its not just the Android users who are getting a benefit. Microsoft has also released an app for its popular Outlook email program to run on iOS devices like iPhone and iPad. This has been done to allow people to work in a more familiar environment, similar to the one they currently experience on Outlook’s desktop client.
These aggressive pushes are actually helping Microsoft in getting more downloads from its own Windows Store. In a surprising move, the company published statistics related to Windows Store downloads, claiming that it had seen a 110% surge in the same.
It has been almost three months since Microsoft started offering test versions of its Office apps on Android, but this latest release will mark the first full public release of Microsoft’s mobile Office suite for Android. The apps can be downloaded from Android’s Play Store right away.
This however isn’t the first time that the Redmond giant has made certain of its offerings, available for free. The company recently announced a whole new MSN-branded suite for Android and iOS platforms, which included apps like weather, search etc. The company also broke the over decade-old custom, by releasing Office for iPad, before it released the same for its own Windows platform.
However, this is also being considered a move wherein Satya Nadella is looking to persuade mobile users to go for the complete, Internet based Office suite, which starts at $7 per month for personal users.
As for the Outlook for iOS app, Microsoft seems to be making good use of its recent Accompli acquisition, as the Outlook e-mail app on iOS is powered by Accompli’s back-end. The new app will make it way more easier for iPhone and iPad users to link email to calendars and working with file attachments, something which the native Mail app fails to deliver.
As for Android users, Microsoft will soon be releasing an Outlook app for Android platform too.
