Microsoft’s push of Office 365 annual payments over ‘one time’ purchases continues with the announcement that they have over 20 million consumer customers for Office 265.
It’s one number from their results for the last quarter of 2015.
Office 365 overall had a whopping 70% increase in revenue. But the overall ‘Productivity and Business Processes’ division (which includes Office) revenue either declined 2% or increased 5% depending on which accounting measure you choose.
The company is boasting about the take up of annual rental Office (Office 365) but it’s little surprise given that it’s pushed heavily while traditional SKU’s of Office are hard to find and little discounted. Try to find Office 2016 for Windows or Mac for sale in a store … it’s almost all Office 365 activation cards.
It’s also proud of the 200 million devices that have Windows 10 with favorable comparisons to the acceptance of Windows 8. Hardly a fair comparison since Windows 8 was a paid upgrade while Windows 10 is being heavily pushed to customers as a free and seemingly inevitable upgrade.
That’s not to say Windows 10 is bad … it’s not. Windows 7 users will benefit from the switch to Windows 10 – if only for the File History feature. It’s a harder decision for Windows 8 users but, in the end, Windows 10 is hard to pass up at the price.
Overall, Microsoft is setting itself up nicely for the future.
Microsoft Office’s place as the overwhelming office suite is secure from possible rivals because the software/service is now available on all major platforms – not just Windows. Annual payments for MS Office mean a better and more flexible revenue flow to Microsoft.
Windows 10 will succeed, if only because of the way it’s being forced upon current Windows users. The new operating system is a marketing base for Microsoft to sell other services and software in the future.
