Good news for Microsoft and Android lovers. Maintaining the ideas of CEO Satya Nadella of prioritizing mobiles, and cloud services, some upcoming Samsung tablets will come with pre-installed Microsoft apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype. Also by purchasing the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge, owners will have immediate access 100 GB of free storage on OneDrive.
There will be 3 versions of Microsoft’s Office 365 available, not only for business customers, paired with Samsung’s Knox security software suite:
- Business
- Business Premium
- Enterprise
Striking a deal with Samsung isn’t enough for Microsoft, and this strategy will most likely be a worthy attempt at dominating the already saturated marketplace. By 2016, Microsoft is planning on offering Dell owners, and other OEMs from various countries, the same deal – free Microsoft apps, pre-installed. They will most surely be extending to countries as Canada, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Pakistan, and some countries in Africa.
Peggy Johnson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s business development, sees a bright future not only for Microsoft, but for OEM’s also. ” For OEMs, these deals will increase the value of and enrich people’s experiences on Android devices. Original device manufacturers are important because they extend Microsoft services to the ecosystem. More specifically, they help to reach a greater number of other device manufacturers, resulting in even more choice for customers around the world.”
Forbes has stated that Microsoft is in advanced talks with CyanogenMod about bringing their pre-installed apps to them. CyanogenMod is currently trying to ” Put a bullet through Google’s head” by taking a hold of the OS chess table, currently dominated by Android and iOS. Raising 80$ mil from investors as Twitter, Qualcomm, Telefónica, and media entrepeneur Rupert Murdoch, their goal is make their way, slowly, but surely, towards an even playing field.
“These deals demonstrate how we are working with hardware partners in new ways to deliver rich experiences through their scale,” says Johnson. “We’ve proven that we’re not afraid to look outside ourselves to reinvent ourselves.”
It’s unclear at this point how Microsoft is playing the game, how are they planning to get a profit from offering free software, but the alternative would be to let Google, who is already offering for free Google docs, sheets, and slides, to snowball in an area that Microsoft was head-dog – software.
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