Building on the announcements that they made at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft and Samsung today have announced a furthering of their relationship which will include the pre-install of Microsoft Office apps on Samsung Android-based tablets. The announcement, while not a complete surprise, is good news for Samsung devices users as they will get these apps and the impact of this is both for consumers and businesses. While I have been quite critical of how Google themselves had played with Microsoft, it is clear that Samsung sees the value of a relationship between the two companies even after a contentious legal battle. While I’m not sure this is all kiss-and-make-up, it certainly is a step in the right direction.
You can read the full Press Release here but here are the highlights:
- Samsung is already pre-installing OneNote, OneDrive and Skype on the new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. This is something that was announced at MWC and these two devices will also
Microsoft Word for Android
come with 100GB of storage on OneDrive for two years.
- In the first half of 2015, Samsung will begin pre-installing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in addition to OneNote, OneDrive and Skype on select Android tablets.
- For businesses, there will be three versions of Office 365 available (Business, Business Premium and Enterprise) which will be coupled with Samsung’s KNOX security solution.
For those who aren’t familiar with Samsung KNOX, it is a solution that allows users on Android devices to easily select between a personal or business persona on their devices and the enterprise can control what is installed on that business persona on the device.
The benefits to both organizations are pretty clear and given how impressive the Office experience is on an Android tablet it is a bit of a no-brainer in my view. I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 and while I’m still not a huge fan of Android, this device is great and running the Office apps on it is what only I wish I had in Windows Phone.
For those who prefer non-Samsung Android devices, you will still need to install the Office apps from the App Store.
