Article from: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/technology/microsoft-to-give-away-mobile-version-of-office-software.html?ref=business&_r=0

This article briefly describes Microsoft’s new marketing strategy to release free versions of microsoft office to mobile users. I believe that this will improve Microsoft’s intentions of increasing the use of office towards mobile users, who currently turn to free apps such as evernote.

I found this article very interesting, because as big as a company as Microsoft is, I’m surprised that it took this long to start targeting mobile device users. As more people are becoming more technologically savvy, more users are switching towards computers to portable devices such as tablets or iPads, therefore increasing usage of microsoft products wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Personally though I feel like this is just a small goal in what Microsoft’s main intentions are, which is to increase brand awareness of their product, and the potential brand loyalty obtained from all these users using office resulting in the purchase of the premium product. I could even suggest that this could increase PC sales, however this seems unlikely due to the upcoming trend of tablet usage.

However, I think that this is just a minute step to Microsoft’s long term goal as only 13% of microsoft office revenue comes from consumers (Wingfield) , with so many free substitutes to Microsoft Office, what is it that differentiates Microsoft Office from any other note-taking product? Are they trying to push tablet sales like the ‘surface’ or trying to increase PC sales? By making microsoft office free for mobile users, they leave both options possible, more people might purchase products related to microsoft like the surface, or if that trend starts to fade out the brand loyalty of microsoft might lead them to buying microsoft related computers.