Microsoft has announced plans to offer a free, ad supported version of Microsoft Office 14 when the software is released next year.
Stephen Elop, Microsoft Business Division president, explained the idea behind the free version of Office, which will display ads next to the workspace. “There will be ad-based revenue streams. There’s an opportunity to draw those pirate customers into the revenue stream. We want to draw them into the Windows family and maybe there’s an upsell opportunity later.”
Most software insiders expect the free version of Office 14 to be a bare-bones version of the full Office suite and will likely include only Word, Excel and PowerPoint (similar to the low-end Microsoft Works).
This idea of revenue stream diversification is not new for Microsoft, as the software giant has for several years considered offering Office on a subscription basis. Participants in this program would pay a monthly or yearly fee to use the Office software components.
When you think about all of the money that Microsoft loses on the huge number of people using pirated versions of Office, these new ideas for increasing revenue begin to make a lot more sense.
