Microsoft this morning announced the official launch of Office for Android phone, five weeks after the company rolled out the suite of applications as a preview.
Today’s release, which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint designed for
the Android smartphone experience, follows earlier efforts at bringing Office to Android tablets, as well as support for Office on iOS devices, Windows and OS X.
The Office apps offer support for a variety of common tasks,
including the ability to review and edit files while on the go,
presenting PowerPoint presentations from your phone, and quickly pulling
up documents even when they’re stored on competing services like Google
Drive, Dropbox or Box. The apps, which will replace the older Office Mobile, require 1 GB of RAM and Android KitKat (4.4.x) or above. Android M is not yet supported.
The apps are free to use provided you have a free Microsoft account, but a number of extra features aimed at power users can be unlocked with an Office 365 subscription.
The apps will also be pre-installed on devices from over 30 OEMs, including Samsung, LG, Sony, and others, the company notes. Many of these devices will arrive in retail stores later in the year.
However, users don’t have to wait for their own handset to come with
Office pre-loaded – the apps are now available to the public for
download. Word for Android, Excel for Android and PowerPoint for Android are
live now on Google Play, and in China, they’re available on a number of
alternative app stores, including those from Tencent, Baidu, Xiaomi,
and CMCC. The Samsung Galaxy Store also offers others around the world
access to download.
According to Microsoft, preview testers ran the Office for Android
phone apps on over 1,900 different phone models in 83 countries, which
allowed the company to incorporate their feedback into the versions
out today. Testers’ feedback not only helped the company troubleshoot
bugs, but Microsoft also made adjustments to the user interface and
added features, it says. For instance, the Office for Android phone apps
now connect to third-party storage services including Google Drive and
Box, and Microsoft implemented usability adjustments to make it easier
to navigate commands within the apps.
The release represents yet another move by Microsoft to fully embrace
its cross-platform strategy when it comes to its software. Office was
once tied largely to Windows PCs, but the company today is working to
make sure its flagship productivity suite works anywhere its users are –
even on competitors’ OS’s. The strategy seems to be succeeding
at putting Office in the hands of a large audience – in April of this
year, the company said its iOS and Android downloads combined had topped 100 million.