Perhaps one of the most confusing things to understand when dealing with Microsoft products is how licensing work. In the case of Office, there are different prices and access to features depending whether you’re using the mobile Office apps or the desktop apps, which can unlock all the features Office has to offer.
According to Microsoft, any device with a screen size of 10.1-inch or less is a mobile device. Typically it is a device you don’t use with a keyboard or mouse, which means that it doesn’t fall in the “professional” category, for these devices the core editing and viewing experience is free.
Alongside the freemium experience, the software giant also offers Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal, people using these type of subscriptions can get more features on top of what is already free, plus 1TB of OneDrive storage and 60 minutes of Skype unlimited worldwide calling per month, and the ability to install Office on a number of devices.
For professional (desktop) use, people will need to sign-up for an Office 365 subscription. This type of subscription is for organizations that need more product integration. They need security and reliability. “Serving professional users on a subscription-only basis makes sense, because of those extended needs, and the resulting product categories and licensing models for business customers are a key element to Office 365 experiencing phenomenal growth.” — Microsoft says.
Although, the software maker is able to offer the core Office features for free, the suite of applications still a gold mine for the company. In less than a year there has been more than 80 million downloads of Office for iOS and Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal grew to more than 9.2 million subscribers.
In addition, the company recently announced that is parenting with various Android phone makers, such as Samsung, Dell and others to pre-install Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype to more Android devices.
Source Microsoft
