Comments on: Microsoft – Days of Office.

By: geraty

geraty — Thu, 26 Mar 2015 02:26:26 +0000

Have you looked at this post re msft’s marketing. I found it interesting.
http://news.microsoft.com/speeches/chris-capossela-convergence-2015/

By: windsorr

windsorr — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 06:17:00 +0000

thats right but the functions that Office offers for free will satisfy the needs of the families that consdier $100 a year not to be chump change.

By: Tatilsever

Tatilsever — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 18:17:31 +0000

> “No one has ever been in doubt that Office is superior to anything else out there”
No one? Keynote is a much nicer presentation maker.

It also depends on your use cases. Word is good if you need a 300 page document at work, but if you are putting together a newsletter or flyer, Pages is a much better “page layout maker”, sort of a consumer grade version of Adobe InDesign and Word doesn’t even come close. Numbers may not compare to Excel if you need thousands of entries distributed over multiple worksheets running macros, but if all you need is keeping track of a home improvement budget, it is a more user friendly app.

By the way, $100 per year ain’t chump change compared to free for most families. Google Docs will be around for a long while.

By: windsorr

windsorr — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 14:17:24 +0000

Thats fair comment. Microsoft has taken away the reason to ever consider using them but there is an installed base. I think this will be eroded over time as users come back to something better at the same price.
WE shall see.

By: Tim Nash

Tim Nash — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:56:07 +0000

I agree MSFT has to fight the Office alternatives. I disagree with your belief that Google Docs and iWork will disappear. While these apps are defaults they will have substantial numbers of users and that is one way businesses can keep the pressure on MSFT pricing.

By: windsorr

windsorr — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 13:02:46 +0000

Yes agree. This is not ca content consumption proposition. However, 75% of PC users 5 years ago used a PC for some form of content creation. (This figure is now much higher as the 25% are leaving the platform. This is what MSFT is fighting for as the 25% is aready lost.

By: Tim Nash

Tim Nash — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 10:37:38 +0000

While this will stop or at least reduce the erosion of the Office user base, these are not must use apps for most consumers.

Microsoft’s problem in mobile working is that it only has a dominant market position, and is therefore the default, on laptops. As soon as you move to tablets and smartphones MS is an also ran and reliant on IT, or the user, to install Office which is not optimised for iOS or Android. As was learned with Maps, being the default and good enough for most, gains many more users than a downloadable better alternative.