Yesterday we reported that Outlook has been released for iOS and Android. Word, PowerPoint, and Excel were released last year. The office suite as a whole is receiving high praises and downloads. Just in the iOS app store, Office has received 80 million downloads. The current versions of Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel have ratings of 4, 4, 4.5, and 5 stars in the Apple app store respectively. In the Google Play store they all have ratings very close to 4 stores (Google Play displays incremental fractions of stars).
Yay! According to the @AppStore, @Outlook is the best new #email app. Download yours free! http://t.co/GIgwfafqu6 pic.twitter.com/Ic5hbfdFPN
— Office (@Office) January 29, 2015
Some features aren’t exclusive to Outlook by any means but Outlook does lay them out in a way that’s familiar to the ecosystem they are on. Occasionally an app that is on one platform shows up on another and feels out of place. The Outlook app for iOS and Android has settings, icons, and a layout that are tailored to each operating system.
Microsoft has been more open and free with it’s Office Suite and other products over the last year or so. Office is free on Android and iOS and is having obvious success in both downloads and user feedback. Another plus side to more touch friendly versions of Office being available is that Microsoft can use popular features from other platform’s versions of Office and use them within their own.
Further reading: Cross platform, Excel, Office, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word
