Microsoft: Now you can create, edit on Office mobile apps for free
The software giant previously restricted use of its Office suite on mobile devices to customers with a subscription.
Microsoft's new Office mobile apps comes to the iPhone. Photo by Sarah Tew/CNET
Mobile customers want robust, free software that works with a lot of apps and can be accessed anywhere. So far, Microsoft has failed to embrace those concepts -- but it's working to change that.
The software giant on Thursday unveiled a handful of changes to its Office software on smartphones and tablets running Apple and Google's operating systems, refreshing its Word, PowerPoint and Excel apps to make them friendlier for the mobile age.
The most notable change is that users on Apple's iPhone smartphone, iPad tablet, or devices running Google's Android operating system will be able to create and edit Office content for free. Before, doing that required an Office 365 subscription.
Microsoft is the latest company to embrace the concept of "freemium," in which many core aspects of a game or app are given away, but there exists an option to pay up for additional bells and whistles. The shift represents Microsoft's revamped strategy of going after as broad a market as possible.
"We want more people to use our applications," Amanda Lefebvre, an Office product manager, said in an interview. "Usage is a primary goal for us. We want to give them more reasons to use our product."
As part of the changes, Microsoft also decided to blow up Office for the iPhone, which included basic versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel all in one app. Instead, it's now providing three standalone apps of Word, PowerPoint and Excel with more capabilities, just like the company did with its Office for iPad apps.
These changes come just two days after Microsoft and cloud-storage company Dropbox unveiled a collaboration to allow users to access Dropbox directly from Office apps and edit Office files from the Dropbox app.
While the Office suite of word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software have dominated in the PC world, Microsoft has had little success utilizing that software to draw customers to its Windows Phone operating system on mobile devices. These days, Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems control nearly all the smartphone and tablet market, with Microsoft's system powering just 2.5 percent of mobile devices, according to researcher IDC.
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Microsoft: Now you can create, edit on Office mobile apps for free