Microsoft Officially Releases Office For Android Smartphones
Microsoft continues its quest for multi-platform domination with the official release of Office for Android smartphones. Microsoft of course has Office software available for its own Windows and Windows Phone (and future Windows 10 Mobile) operating systems along with iOS and OS X, but today marks the day that your average Samsung Galaxy S6 or LG G4 users can grab the suite from the Google Play Store.
Like the version of Office that was earlier released for Android tablets, mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are available separately to download. The entire suite is available for free, although some additional functionality is opened up for those that sign up for an Office 365 subscription.
With the Android smartphone-focused version of Office, on-the-go professionals can make quick edits to documents, fire up PowerPoint presentations to display wirelessly, and even access documents from cloud storage services like OneDrive (another Microsoft property), Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox.
“We are so grateful to our preview users, and with their help we were able to test the apps on over 1,900 different Android phone models in 83 countries,” said Microsoft’s Kirk Koenigsbauer. “During the preview, we heard from thousands of these users, and over the last few weeks we were able to incorporate a lot of their feedback into the apps we’re launching today.”
You will need Android KitKat 4.4.x or above to install Office, and don’t even bother trying if you are a developer running Android M — it’s not supported (yet).
