Microsoft Being Inventive in New Ways to Offer Office 2010

There is no questioning the importance of Microsoft Office and its impact both on consumers and businesses.  With such staples as Word and Excel, Microsoft Office is a product used by many on a daily basis.  With Microsoft Office 2010, the company hopes to expand the productivity software's reach even further.  They have several strategies to achieve this, the first being to offer the product for free.  It won't be offered entirely free, of course, but it will be available in a form that will at least give consumers a glimpse of what it has to offer.

This glimpse will occur mainly through Microsoft's offer to PC manufacturers to include Office Starter on their machines.  Office Starter is basically a demo of the Word and Excel programs.  It would replace the older Microsoft Works program that found its way onto many computers in the past with no cost to the consumer.  The idea behind having Office Starter pre-installed on computers is that consumers would see the improvements that come with the software and later be tempted to upgrade to the full version.  Any purchased upgrades would not only benefit Microsoft's bottom line, but also the bottom line of the computer manufacturers and retailers, thus giving them an incentive to pre-install the software on their machines.  Microsoft believe that this incentive will work, and estimates that around 80 percent of new computers will have Office Starter pre-installed once it is released.

Besides having Office Starter pre-installed on new computers, Microsoft has other plans to increase the software's exposure.  The first  is through Office Web Apps that are browser-based and free to the public.  The second is through product key cards.  Product key cards will essentially be cards similar to phone cards or gift cards in physical form that can be purchased in retail establishments to get the full version of Office 2010 on one computer. 

The advantage of these space-saving cards is that retailers can place them in various locations throughout the store, from the computer software section to the cash register, in order to increase sales.  This helps Microsoft's exposure and also allows retailers to save precious inventory space.  The more conventional boxed versions of the software will also be available, allowing consumers to install the software on more than one machine.

Office 2010 will succeed Office 2007 and is expected to be offered to the public around June of 2010.  It will run on the Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 operating systems.  Among the new features one can expect with Office 2010 are a built-in screen capture tool, new PowerPoint animations, new text effects, and more.  To keep in sync with the social networking theme that is so prevalent nowadays, there is supposedly a Social Connector feature included that will allow users to view status updates of contacts as well as other information as they compose emails and the like. 

For more on Microsoft and its marketing strategies for Office 2010, visit: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20001553-56.html