Android partners line up for Office
Part of the reason Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft was so that fresh blood could navigate Redmond in the mobile era that we now find ourselves in. Enter Satya Nadella, current boss of Microsoft, who continues to push an aggressive multi-platform strategy for the company's top applications. That includes Office, and in the coming months, you're going to see it pre-installed on several new Android tablets.
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced an additional 20 Android tablet makers that have agreed to pre-load select services and apps on their slates, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive, and Skype.
Several of them are likely to be unfamiliar names to anyone living in the U.S., such as Grupo Nucleo (Argentina), Inco (Mexico), Cube (China), and Postivo (Brazil), to list just a few. However, there are few familiar faces in the crowd -- Haier (China), LG (Global), and Sony (Global).
In particular, LG will pre-load the aforementioned apps on its forthcoming tablet and Sony has promised to do the same with its Xpera Z4 tablet within the next 90 days. Together with 11 other manufacturers including Dell and Samsung, Microsoft now has 31 hardware partners around the world that have agreed to pimp its apps on Android slates.
Cross-platform support is the key to Microsoft's strategy as it transitions to a Windows as a service business model. It remains to be seen what the long term costs for Windows will be, but however that shakes out, the company will continue to push its accompanying software on alternate platforms, namely Android and iOS. Incidentally, Microsoft also just recently announced that separate Cortana apps will be available for Android and iOS when Windows 10 ships.
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1GDZgqK
