Office Follows Windows 10 On The Freemium Ride
Office Follows Windows 10 On The Freemium Ride
Just like Windows 10, Office, the productivity suite, Microsoft’s number one cash cow, is now all in with the fermium model. The company made the official announcement a few weeks back.
But since that was rather vaguely worded, Redmond is back in with more details.
Basically the Office suite of productivity applications will be completely free on small devices, and that should result in more people experiencing the popular solution on mobile hardware. What sort of mobile hardware, though?
This is what the company tries to answer in a new blog post:
Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office 365 Client Apps and Services team explains that Microsoft considers all machines under 10.1 inches of screen size as mobile devices:
“We are classifying anything with a screen size of 10.1 inches or less as a true mobile device: You’re probably using it on the go, when it’s not practical to use a larger computing device such as a PC or a Mac. You probably aren’t using a mouse or a keyboard, instead navigating via touch interface. It’s probably not a ‘pro’ category tablet that is used for design or presentations.”
This new classification of the mobile category is something that will transition not just to Office, but Windows and other Microsoft solutions too, in the future.
The software titan explained the new licensing model recently, and the new strategy seems to offer the essential feature package free of charge, and then make enhanced functionality available for end users and enterprises with a subscription.
Or a one-time charge, for that matter.
All Windows 10 for Phones devices will come with new Office apps preinstalled, while Office 2016, the desktop version is most likely heading for a release in the second half of 2015, after Windows 10.
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