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Microsoft has announced partnerships with 20 device manufacturers to pre-install apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype, OneNote, and OneDrive on various Android devices:
In addition to Sony and LG, Microsoft is also announcing 18 other partners today, including Haier and a number of smaller manufacturers, bringing its total partner count up to 31. Microsoft previously made deals with Samsung, Dell, and Pegatron to have these apps pre-installed on tablets. A number of apps also come preinstalled on the Galaxy S6. The exact business agreement between Microsoft and these manufacturers isn't detailed, but Microsoft says that it opens up "new revenue streams" for its partners. LG is supposed to begin including the apps in an upcoming tablet, and Sony will add them to the Z4 tablet within the next few months.
In addition, Cortana, Microsoft's "digital assistant" alternative to Siri and Google Now, will be coming to Android and iOS:
This should not be very surprising since the Redmond based company has moved quickly over the last year or so to bring most of its services to iOS and Android, and Cortana is just the next step. Just like with Cortana on Windows Phone, you can use it to track flights, check sports scores, or use the geo-fencing to set location based reminders. Unlike Windows Phone though, the deeper integration with Cortana such as "Hey Cortana" voice activation or the ability for Cortana to perform actions within other applications is not going to be possible on the third-party systems.
[...] The Phone Companion app will be coming soon to Windows 10 through the Insider Program. Most of the apps are already available for iOS and Android, but Cortana support will be coming at the end of June for Android and later in the year for iPhone.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday May 29 2015, @04:45AM
I can see Microsoft's efforts to keep their flagship Office products "in the loop". By now, I am sure there are quite a bit of people looking to replace these bloated proprietary formats with something more trustworthy and verifiable against hitchhiking malware.
However, Microsoft has a big freight train in motion, with a lot of marketing inertia, along with assortment of patents to ward off any competitors. Once a corporation has achieved this kind of success, it does not go away overnight, but it can go away.
We have just seen this happen to Research-In-Motion ( RIM aka BlackBerry ). They were once the darling of the stock market. However, they seemed to take their success for granted and thought people would always spend more for a BlackBerry.
Just because things have a track record of success does not guarantee future success.
Quite frankly, I am extremely puzzled on how Microsoft has managed to keep the sales machine going - given the inability, even to this day, of even opening up a business document file without risk of getting malware.
Many businesses lack the ability to communicate with their customer without placing their customer at risk for malware infections by as much as even opening the document in a Microsoft reader.
And that constant barrage of things that need fixing.. or sometimes things that someone else wants Microsoft to break for them ( FTDI chips, for instance ).
.
Businessmen still seem to need the illusion of "support" than the reality of a much simpler but secure operating system.
If there is anything the world needs today - its a good robust public OS kernel that will unify our machines just as ASCII unified our communications protocol.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]