MS Office For Android: Pretty, But Woefully Incomplete 174
mattydread23 writes "The new Office 365 app for Android, launched a week ago, has a super nice UI, but lacks a bunch of basic features and has some really weird oversights — including a classic Microsoft dialog box that offers a choice that makes no sense. 'Overall, it still feels like Microsoft is still trying to funnel people toward its own Windows Phone if they want a better experience. In fact, in a question on an FAQ about how the Android Office app compares to the Windows Phone Office app, Microsoft says this: “Office Mobile on Windows Phone 8 provides a richer, more integrated experience,” and goes on to specify how. That’s a losing strategy when so many other apps — many of them free — offer a richer experience on Android and iOS.' "
Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Interesting)
There are people in the organization who understand where things are heading in the future, and have convinced the company leadership that they need to be on iOS and Android or get left behind. But the old school mentality dies hard, and Microsoft has painted itself into a corner by making Office one of the fundamental selling points for its tablets (which is flawed thinking anyway, and shows they still don't grasp the market). So this is what you end up with - a crappy office experience on iOS and Android that only serves to make the company look bad.
Classic disruptive technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has a long standing, dominant set of softwares (Windows/Office) that has been its cash cow for longer than many of us have been old enough to vote. It's the classic case for disruptive technologies:
1) The old, highly profitable incumbent using old technology and charging pretty pennies for it.
2) The new upstart technology, able to do similar stuff in a new context and dramatically cheaper.
3) Incumbent tries to mash its old technology into the new context to preserve its margins.
4) Incumbent dies a death of a thousand paper cuts as the new context, typically more nimble and with an entirely new, cheaper cost structure, slowly peck at the old incumbent until it's irrelevant.
Many of us old-timers remember when IBM ruled the roost for the PC. Some of us remember when DEC was the dominant force for mini computers. A few of us remember when IBM ruled the roost for computing mainframes, before the mini computer took sway.
We should give Microsoft lots of credit. Microsoft had a *long* time at the helm. It was able to cash in on the entire PC revolution, and even much of the Internet revolution, until the Mobile revolution, which it foresaw a decade or more in advance and tried hard (but hardly) to embrace.
For me, going from Windows Phone 6.1 to Android 2.2 on a Motorola Droid 2 was like going from a rusty riding lawn mower to an LXi Convertible. It's sad, really. Microsoft had its part in the mobile game for several hardware generations, and they were beaten so mightily that they are now basically the upstarts trying to be a halfway, third place contender.
Admire what they've done, but this mobile situation is just sad given how hard they tried.
Seems like a touchy strategy... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can understand that Microsoft doesn't want to leave Windows RT even deader in the water than it already is (presumably this is why their Android application point-blank doesn't support tablets, only phones); but it strikes me that they might be overplaying their hand.
The market for office suites that are identical to Office is quite large, quite lucrative; but also has very high barriers to entry. Even Microsoft has shown limited ability (at least within a useful timeframe) to rebuild such a beast (notably, they had to drag all of Windows Desktop mode, and the supporting libraries, into the otherwise all-Metro Windows RT to support Office, even then lacking some features, because they have no 'metro' Office suite.)
Unfortunately for them, while the market for somewhat-compatible-with-Office office suites isn't nearly as lucrative, it's substantially more competitive, with comparatively low barriers to entry and some competent players.
Microsoft seems to be playing with crippling their offerings of a somewhat-compatible-with-Office software package as though they were working from the position of strength provided by selling a 100% Office office suite. Which, outside of Windows proper, they don't do, and may not even be able to do. That seems like it isn't going to work out exactly as planned...
Re:Typical Microsoft approach (Score:5, Interesting)
There are people in the organization who understand where things are heading in the future, and have convinced the company leadership that they need to be on iOS and Android or get left behind. But the old school mentality dies hard, and Microsoft has painted itself into a corner by making Office one of the fundamental selling points for its tablets (which is flawed thinking anyway, and shows they still don't grasp the market). So this is what you end up with - a crappy office experience on iOS and Android that only serves to make the company look bad.
Once again this underscores the incredible luck Microsoft have been riding for decades, after big businesses opted to standardize micro computers on MS-DOS PCs. Microsoft never had to claw their way to the top, they just bundled, bought up and drove other competition to ruin by immoral business practices. They haven't lost their way, they never had it to begin it. Apple and Google have carved out the smart phone and tablet markets and made them what they are - a war for supremacy. Microsoft are still playing silly games, like they have some dominant market position.
I love it! (Score:4, Interesting)
First they killed the Window OS with Windows 8. Then they killed the Windows tablet with Windows RT. Now they're killing MS Office with MS Office For Android.
Is there really anything left to kill?
I love it!
Old tactics, really (Score:3, Interesting)
And much of their old dominance was founded on their monopoly of the OS through windows, and they were not shy about (ab)using it.
For example, they allegedly tweaked Win95 to kill WordPerfect [techweekeurope.co.uk]. Novell sued but lost the court case.
To kill off Netscape, they not only bundled IE with every copy of Windows but also allegedly altered or manipulated its application programming interfaces (APIs) in the OS to favor Internet Explorer over third party web browsers. This led directly to the anti-trust lawsuit by the government against MS [wikipedia.org].
Now that the fight is over mobile and tablet space, MS is still sticking to its game plan by trying to leverage its old dominance into these new markets. Hence you only get the full product (in this case, Office) if you use Winph8 for mobile or Surface Pro for tablets. Their hand is weaker though since they do not control the underlying OS (iOS and Android) so they are relying on attachment to Office to drive the numbers.