Microsoft released its new Office apps for mobile just a few days ago, and the Word app has already shot to the No. 2 spot among the free apps in Apple's App Store.
When Microsoft announced the new set of apps it also announced that they would be free and fairly functional, adding more features for subscribers of Office 365.
Apart from Word, Microsoft also made PowerPoint and Excel available to the iPhone, as they had been before to the iPad. The iPad versions also got updated to be the same as the iPhone versions.
The free apps allow users to view and do basic editing to documents. Previously users could only view files without an Office 365 subscription. While the free apps do offer basic editing, they also have some restrictions to entice users to upgrade. For example, when a user receives a file it can only be edited in landscape mode, but they cannot change the document to landscape mode. Users can receive a document with columns and edit the text found in those files, but they cannot alter the formatting of the columns.
Despite the fact that the app is free for the general consumer, it's not free for everyone.
"The unsung thing in all this is that this news is only about consumers. For businesses, nothing has changed," said Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. "Office for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets is indeed free, within certain bounds. Office is free for you to use on your smartphone or tablet if, and only if, you are not using it for commercial purposes [and] you are not performing advanced editing."
What Microsoft has essentially done is shift the line between free and paid. While before users couldn't edit documents without a subscription, now basic editing can be performed, sucking users into the free version and enticing many more people to upgrade to the subscription.
"Microsoft realized that compared to the competition, it wasn't looking real great, so why not offer consumers apps they can truly use," said Guy Creese, an analyst at Gartner. "This is a response to market pressures to give users what they'd like to have."
Unfortunately for Microsoft, time is not on its side. While the iPad was released in 2010, the company did not offer a truly effective office suite for the platform until now. During those four years, many users latched onto other office platforms for the iPad. Many users are expected to stick to what they're used to rather than change to Microsoft's new offerings.
