Samsung announced at Mobile Word Congress earlier this year that its Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones would come pre-installed with OneNote, OneDrive and Skype. Today, Microsoft is adding ten additional OEM partners who will pre-install Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype on their Android devices launching later this year along with increasing their partnership with Samsung.
The eleven OEM partners were announced today by Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Business Development, Peggy Johnson who joined the company last September. She outlined “We’ve proven that we’re not afraid to look outside ourselves to reinvent ourselves. We’ve received fantastic customer feedback for making Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype available across all platforms. But, we’re far from done. Now we see an opportunity to turn our focus to our device partners — easing mobile access to great apps and services for customers by pre-installing them directly on the device”. These partners that will be pre-installing these apps right onto the device include Samsung, Dell, TrekStor, JP Sa Couto, Datamatic, DEXP, Hipstreet, QMobile, Tecno, Casper and Pegatron. Samsung and Dell, of course being the two biggest names with the rest more regional specific OEM’s.
As for Samsung, Microsoft also went into more specifics on the partnership. Many me remember the recent Microsoft/Samsung court case over Android royalties which was recently resolved unexpectedly. What Samsung and Microsoft agreed on, we don’t know but it’s likely this is part of it. As previously announced, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge will come pre-installed with OneNote, OneDrive and Skype and include an additional 100GB of OneDrive storage for two years. In the first half of 2015, Samsung is planning to pre-install Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype on select Samsung Android tablets. The deal also incorporates both companies Enterprise solutions by allowing businesses that purchase devices through Samsung’s business-to-business sales channels will have access to three versions of Office 365 — Business, Business Premium and Enterprise — coupled with Samsung’s KNOX security solution.
Satya Nadella’s “mobile first, cloud first” vision is starting to take effect more each and every day and today’s announcement is continuing in that idea. It’s addressing the consumer demand for having these services on their devices one they boot them up without the need of downloading them separately. The idea is that Microsoft services are now reaching more people worldwide. More people will use Office, OneDrive and Skype because it’s right there on the device. This is Microsoft’s goal, the companies services across every screen that people use. This isn’t abandoning Windows, this is lighting up these services on every screen. Windows will always remain on top for the company but they also need to recognize the millions of non-Windows devices that people use every day. Whether it’s an iPhone, Android or even a Mac, Microsoft has to have its services on those screens that people use every day
^ Alan (@BeetleComet)
Alan Walsh is a games journalist, head writer at AR12Gaming. They contributed 52 articles to ICXM in 2015, focused on game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: leads editorial for AR12Gaming and reviews titles for OpenCritic.