Microsoft Word Passes 1 Billion Installs on Google Play Store

Corbin Davenport, writing for Android Police:

Even though cloud-based productivity suites like Google Docs are incredibly popular, many people (and large corporations) still operate on good ol’ Microsoft Office. The Word text processor was Microsoft’s first Android app to pass 500 million installs on the Play Store, and a little over a year later, it has now passed the 1 billion mark.

As with most apps that reach this many installations, the count isn’t made up entirely of downloads from the Play Store. Microsoft has agreements with Samsung and other manufacturers to pre-install Word (and several other apps) on phones and tablets, so there’s a good chance many of those billion installations come from devices where the app has never been opened.

The Office apps are very popular on iOS too, of course. It makes sense that Microsoft put so much effort into trying get Windows Phone off the ground — they knew that mobile was going to be a huge part of the Office franchise. Turns out it just wasn’t on their own platform.

★ Monday, 15 July 2019