Blog

Microsoft has been positioning itself to push more and more users towards its Office 365 solutions. The company is apparently trying to accomplish this by raising the prices of standard Office suites and tying their licenses to single machines. The prices of Microsoft Office for Mac suites have also been increased significantly.

The increase in price came at the same time as the Office 365 launch event was hosted by Microsoft. In all, the prices registered a hike of 17 percent. Moreover, the more significant change was that Microsoft tied the regular Office suite for Mac with single-mac installations. The same has been done to the Office suite offered to Windows users.

The company is tying down its regular Office suit license to a single PC simply to drive the users into using its Office 365 solution. Like we said before, this goes on to cast a negative light on Microsoft’s behavior.

The interesting part is that the price hike in ‘Microsoft Office for Mac’ suites has not been officially declared by Microsoft in any of its press releases; is it not clearly mentioned on the Mac-specific website of Microsoft Office either. Users of Microsoft Office for Mac are already a tiny minority among the total Office users, so it took a while to even notice the change.

The new price of Office suites for Student is $140, whereas Office for Professional has gone up to $230. In comparison, the $99/year Office 365 solution may sound sweet to many users – and that is precisely what Microsoft is aiming for.

Source: Computer World

Courtesy: 9to5mac

[ttjad keyword=”microsoft”]