Japan is a special country in many ways, even when it comes to buying Microsoft Office. The Japanese can buy Office in ways that Microsoft have dropped for the rest of the world.
Office 365 Home and Personal plans are sold, by Microsoft’s count, in 246 countries and territories but not Japan.
Microsoft Japan has its own arrangements for selling Office 365. Neither the Personal (single licence) or the more popular Home plan (five licenses) are available.
The only ‘subscription’ option is Office 365 Solo. It’s a TWO license product as Microsoft says “can be installed on two Windows PCs or Macs used by the same user.”
Source: Microsoft Japan
¥12,744 is about US$114 , STG£83 , EUR€94 or $144 Aussie dollars.
It’s the most expensive country for an Office 365 annual plan, considering that Japanese buyers don’t have the cheaper ‘Personal’ option available elsewhere. They also don’t get the economical Home option either.
Office 2016 Perpetual licenses in Japan
The perpetual license options for Office 2016 Windows in Japan are also different even when the names are the same.
Office 2016 Professional and Home & Business bundles are a single perpetual license product in most countries. But in Japan those products have two licenses for use by the same person.
There’s also an Office 2016 Personal bundle with two licenses for Word, Excel and PowerPoint only.
Many people across the globe would love to have those options with two licences because it would let them install Office on a desktop and laptop computer. That’s what everyone used to get with pre-subscription Office. Now only Japan has what we were all accustomed to.
