Microsoft Office to Be Free for Devices Smaller Than 10.1 Inches

Microsoft on Wednesday confirmed that it has plans to make the "core editing and viewing experience free" on Office free for devices sporting screen size less than 10.1 inches.

The company's move is in-line with its recent releases of the Office app for iOS and Android, which also offer core features such as editing and viewing for free.

Announcing the news, Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Office Division, in a blog revealed the news and said, "Currently, we are also using screen size to delineate between professional and personal use. Based on our research, we are classifying anything with a screen size of 10.1 inches or less as a true mobile device: You're probably using it on the go, when it's not practical to use a larger computing device such as a PC or a Mac. You probably aren't using a mouse or a keyboard, instead navigating via touch interface."

"It's probably not a "pro" category tablet that is used for design or presentations. On these devices, the core editing and viewing experience is free, until you get to those premium, subscription features," he adds.

The company clearly stressed that it has plans to offer its Office productivity suite to a broader audience and offering it for free certainly allows Microsoft to achieve the goal. "Offering a free, basic mobile app exposes more people to the innovations we're bringing to mobile. Our goal is to make Office and other Microsoft services available on small screens to the broadest population of mobile users-and in less than a year, we've already seen more than 80 million downloads of Office for iOS," it said.

Microsoft has already confirmed that the next version of Office for desktop would be called Office 2016, and has been set for general availability "in the second half of 2015." Recently, the company released first Developer Preview version of Office 2016.