Microsoft Word Hits 1 Billion Installs on Google Play (windowscentral.com) 107
Microsoft Word reached over 1 billion installations on Android over the weekend. Microsoft's flagship document editor is arguably Microsoft's greatest success story on Android. With over 1 billion downloads, Microsoft Word is one of the most used productivity apps on the platform. From a report: Microsoft has continued to push Office on Android along with other apps like Your Phone, Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft Teams. The shift has helped Microsoft stay relevant in the mobile space despite the death of Windows 10 Mobile. Microsoft has similar efforts on iOS in an effort to have its services available to as many users as possible. Some around the web have pointed out that Microsoft Office comes preinstalled on many Android phones in an effort to discount Word's milestone of 1 billion installations. While it is true that Microsoft's Office applications come preinstalled on many devices, the fact that Word recently hit 1 billion installations and other Office apps like Excel have "only" hit 500 million shows that quite a few users have downloaded Word from the Google Play Store.
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And likely there's a lot of people like myself. We use Office365 for mail at work. Outlook is the only compatible Android client. And with the security settings, PDF and Word attachments can only be opened in Word (even though I have WPS office on my phone).
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As I said I have WPS office on my phone, which is my preferred program to open MS documents. I have RadaeePDFViewer that I prefer to use to view PDFs.
However the security settings my company has prevents saving or accessing email attachments outside of the MS suite. That way they can remotely wipe just the office part of my phone. So to even view PDF attachments from my work email requires MS Word.
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And likely there's a lot of people like myself. We use Office365 for mail at work. Outlook is the only compatible Android client. And with the security settings, PDF and Word attachments can only be opened in Word (even though I have WPS office on my phone).
The free MS Word app was installed on my Android phone by default and does not have an application date expiry. So saying over one billion downloads (you do have to download the full version to use it) is true from a certain point of view. Still, Microsoft can't count me installing their app since I don't use MS Word.
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I'm waiting for Melania to sue to have Donald Trump declared incompetent either after he's impeached (Trump would probably go along with it to avoid prison if he's declared incompetent from dementia - that 4th of July speech was just the latest in a long series of signs), or cabinet removes him for the same reason, or is convicted on one of those other cases, or he loses.
Mike Pence is a better candidate, and replacing Trump at the last minute with Pence gets rid of all the baggage Trump has, without cost
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Pence will be an even worse disaster than Trump - he's a true believer. What I meant was that the Republicans have much more of a chance with Pence because the democrats have an easy target with Trump - everything he says or does is hugely offensive to large populations of the country and the world. p Pence is a lot harder to attack - and pivoting to fight him instead of Trump requires a whole new playbook. Like most Vice Presidents, he's stayed out of view.
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Pence is a better candidate but a worse human being. This is man who espouses Christian values but cannot find the balls to actually enforce them in the Administration. At least no one but a few deluded Evangelicals would accuse Trump of even being a baby Christian. Remember, Pence believes in everything Trump is trying to do.
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Trump is a fool suffering from dementia. Pence is neither. That makes Pence way more dangerous. Trump sucks up to the Armageddon-lust-crazed evangelicals. You know, the Mike Pence gang. Evangelicals believe Trump is being used by god to bring about the final war between good and evil, after which they all go to heaven and we go to hell. Then again, having to worship such a flawed god for eternity would probably make hell look good by comparison.
In my version of the rapture, only non-believers go to heave
I don't understand... (Score:1)
... why anyone would want to use a phone for word processing, unless they had no other option (no computer, etc.). Or perhaps people aren't really doing real work on them. Maybe they are just browsing...
In other words, I don't see the point for most of the world. But 1 BILLION is a big number...
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It is just CALLED Microsoft Word. It is not really Microsoft Word. It is just a simulation (Phones do not have enough storage to contain Microsoft Word).
Just like Microsoft Outlook for Android is just a simulation of Outlook, but is not an e-mail client. Your actual account information (userid and password) is sent to the "Microsoft Cloud" where Microsoft retrieves all your e-mail and then you use a "simulator" on your phone to access the copy Microsoft downloaded. When you "uninstall" Outlook, their cl
Re:I don't understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
The full Microsoft Word (and Office) used to be delivered on a handful of 1.4MB floppy disks. A modern phone and tablet is absolutely capable of running a complex office suite. The fact that the PC version of Word is a bloated mess, doesn't mean it couldn't be trimmed down to a tiny fraction of its size and still retain nearly all of its core functionality.
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People download it because it's feee. People delete it because word processing on a phone is shit and it takes up space.
Microsoft likes telemetry - they can tell us how many copies are still installed and actually used, but the numb is probably near zero.
Re: I don't understand... (Score:2)
Don't forget android tablets, they are far more suitable systems for Word. I have Word on my iPad and iPhone, just in-case - didn't cost a cent and has occasionally been handy to have when dragooned into taking minutes at a meeting.
And yes, one billion is a lot.
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Beginning of the End for Microsoft? (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft is touting the success of giving away a/the flagship Office Product on another OS (without a competing OS of their own)?
What's the upside for this for Microsoft, other than bragging rights, here? Word compatible text processors have been available from other vendors for years but I always thought that Office was something that Microsoft saw as a revenue stream.
Now that they're giving it away, what is Microsoft's business case?
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Office 365 subscriptions for better features, cloud storage, etc.
Re:Beginning of the End for Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd presume because the vast majority of Word and other Office documents are created on a PC (which still dominates business), where you still have to pay for MS Office. This is just helping to ensure that it stays dominant by ensuring that those documents can be accessed on mobile devices. They don't want their customers having to look elsewhere for better cross-platform solutions.
I think it's a smart move by Microsoft. I kind of doubt it would have been a big revenue generator on mobile, but if it's free, a lot of people will just install it for the convenience of being able to look at work documents on the go.
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By forcing Word on to peoples' phones, they are drawing attention to the fact that there is a difference - which will probably end in tears for MS.
I sure as hell did NOT choose to have Word or Excel on my phone - but somehow they arrived with the last Android update.
Re:Beginning of the End for Microsoft? (Score:4, Informative)
By Giving away their flagship Office Product which will only work for 30 days until you pay MS monthly fee, is hardly a bad business move.
While MS has lost the Mobile OS market. Having Android and iOS versions of Office, still really keeps them in the game.
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Word on Android operation is not limited to 30 days - read the download page: https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
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Depends on what you want to do with Word on Android. A large part of the functionality requires Office365, something which will you get a free 30 day subscription to, and something which you can buy and extend directly from Google Play.
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Yeah there are other word processors. But they're not word. Any discussion about the merits of word processors was finished decades ago. There is word, and everything that is not word. The world prefers word. That's it.
The real story here is Microsoft changing gears from a failed strategy of tying their extremely popular and profitable office software suite to the sinking ship that is windows mobile, and making it cross platform.
If I tried to tell you that office would be running on linux based smartphones
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Re:Beginning of the End for Microsoft? (Score:4, Informative)
Limited screen size is 10.1 inches (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.word&hl=en_CA).
That's pretty big and I have a couple of Android tablets and that's big enough to create documents - not as nicely as on the 28" screen I'm using right now, but very useable.
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But have you got Word on that tablet? The fact remains Word on Android is a small shadow of Word and useful for little more than a quick read/edit of existing documents, naturally those stored on your OneDrive, integration for which you need an Office 365 subscription.
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They have proven that despite 15 years and billions of dollars, mobile and tablet focused companies can't so much as compete with a 40 year old word processor written by Microsoft. Word and Excel are so good even MS can't completely fuck them up no matter how many ribbons they add. The real loser here is Google, because docs sucks, big time.
Fundamentally the problem will always be that rich clients are just richer, faster, more usabl
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Microsoft is touting the success of giving away a/the flagship Office Product on another OS (without a competing OS of their own)?
It's the popularity of the mobile version of Word (versus even the rest of the Office suite). They have accepted (like many other vendors and the open source community) that they cannot add anything of value in terms of creating a new mobile OS, Windows Phone (and all the others like webOS, Meego, etc) was fine but it didn't add value to the point of being able to disrupt the market.
Now that they're giving it away, what is Microsoft's business case?
Office365 subscriptions so you can use the full Office suite everywhere.
It's a good thing that Microsoft has realized the issu
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The business case is it crowds out more deserving software. That's worth its weight in gold for Microsoft and always has been.
Remember Office 97 market chumming? (Score:2)
Microsoft surely do. Businesses paid for their installs while copied CDs found their way into millions of personal computers.
Users wanting Word on all devices will pay where it isn't free or convenient to pirate. Serious users won't just run Word on their phone, though Samsung DeX permits a sort of practical desktop Android experience.
Re: Beginning of the End for Microsoft? (Score:2)
Software subscriptions (O365), Windows, Windows server licenses, and office suite still sells well.
Word is only free on iOS/Android devices, not free on Windows or OS X.
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Now that they're giving it away, what is Microsoft's business case?
I guess you've never read a financial report from Microsoft. Their strategy of giving away software which is closely tied to their paid services is netting them incredibly healthy profits.
What's the end game here? Ensure no one else's services is used with a different word processor on a platform that does not present a revenue stream for them but none the less cuts into PC use.
But you forget to mention... (Score:3)
...how many uninstalls?
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False you can uninstall it just fine. Just like Facebook the version shipped with the OS is nothing more than a placeholder shell using a few kb of storage. You can disable it hiding the icon and effectively it is not installed on your device.
This is also why on first load it takes FOREVER to open.
The dream lives on. (Score:2)
...how many uninstalls?
The geek has been proclaiming the death of MS Office since its launch in 1989 for the Mac. His talk of uninstalls is and always been fantasy,
LibreOffice...? (Score:2)
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Why no link? Here's [f-droid.org] the Android version.
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As the lead dev group wishes, you mean.
Oy vey.
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Indeed.
Most of these installs were not even done by the users (exact or otherwise) they were rammed down their throats. At least half the recipients won't know Word is on their phone until it fails to open an email attachment (happened to me yesterday) on their phone.
Does that include uninstallable bloatware? (Score:2)
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Pretty much. Microsoft has always been about the numbers. Back in the day when Netcraft was a thing and they took over Hotmail, MSN and Hotmail actually ran on Linux and their Partners (like us) had massive growth on Apache. They had us reroute ICMP traffic to a dedicated Windows host and proxy web traffic for an entire data center just to get up the numbers.
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Nice try but Hotmail ran on FreeBSD before Microsoft got their hands on it.
1 billion downloads? how many are voluntary? (Score:2)
So, I am one of those billion downloads. I didn't ask for it, never needed to use it, and am stuck with it, as I cannot uninstall it easily. It doesn't quite bother me enough to google a hack to get rid of it.
Of those billion, how many copies were downloaded by folk who actually wanted it?