Microsoft Launches Office Subscription Service - InformationWeek

Microsoft have teamed up with retail merchant Circuit City to offer a consumer subscription service that includes its Office, Live OneCare, Messenger, and Photograph Gallery applications and services.

Microsoft is calling the service Equipt, and will offer it exclusively through Circuit City beginning in mid-July. Subscriptions cost $69.99 for one twelvemonth and cover usage of the included software system on up to three PCs. Subscribers will automatically have ascents to the merchandises at no further complaint as they are released.

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In offering software system subscriptions to consumers, Microsoft is taking a page from its concern playbook. The company offerings its commercial clients subscription entree to software system and services under programmes such as as Open License and Select Plus.

Microsoft and Circuit City functionaries are hoping that the subscription theoretical account -- which offers predictable costs and convenient, all-in-one packaging -- will catch on in the place market. wares director Bryson Gordon called Equipt "a convenient and low-cost manner to remain updated with the up-to-the-minute versions of Office and Windows Live OneCare."

Circuit City engineering merchandise full general director Elliot Becker said the chain, which saw its stock terms driblet by more than than 17% Wednesday after Blockbuster abandoned a $1.35 billion buyout offer, said he anticipates Equipt to be "a runaway hit."

Microsoft Office 2007, the most recent version of the suite, includes the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications. Windows Live OneCare is an incorporate set of personal computer security and optimisation tools that tin be accessed over the Web.

Equipt may appeal to consumers who desire to remain on technology's film editing edge. However, most desktop users only utilize their applications' most basic mathematical functions and as a consequence make not necessitate frequent upgrades. Given that the Home version of Office 2007 now sells for just $112 for lifespan rights, the latter grouping would likely see Equipt, with its $69.99 yearly fee, as a bad bargain.

Microsoft Hopes Office Subscription Plan Will Counter Free Software - InformationWeek

With its Office franchise under onslaught from a host of rivals offering free software, Microsoft is hoping that a new subscription pricing theoretical account for its basis desktop franchise will promote consumers to go on upgrading to the up-to-the-minute editions of the product.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it will give consumers the option of purchasing an yearly licence for Office and its Live OneCare security bundle for $69.99 per twelvemonth under a programme called Equipt. The licence covers usage of the on up to three computing machines and includes entree to all hereafter merchandise upgrades.

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Equipt will be available exclusively through Circuit City beginning in mid-July.

More than anything else, Microsoft is counting on Equipt's convenience factor to assist it fend off competitory menaces from Google, IBM, and other sellers that are offering free and desktop productiveness suites that tin be downloaded over the Internet and supply capablenesses similar to Office.

"Consumers expressed defeat at having to pass clip and attempt installing different types of software, keeping current on new versions, and getting their computing machines put up. We're just making it really convenient and painless for consumers to acquire up and running in a few mouse-clicks," Microsoft grouping merchandise director Bryson Gordon said in an interview posted on the company's Web site.

Equipt includes the Office applications Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as OneCare, Messenger, and Photograph Gallery, plus other applications and services.

Microsoft is hoping that's sufficiency to forestall consumers from migrating to free software. Google recently introduced its Docs package, which have functional equivalents of Office's chief applications and costs nothing.

Meanwhile, IBM is offering Lotus Symphony, another free desktop productiveness battalion that's based on the unfastened beginning OpenOffice.org project.

The outgrowth of free software system could be hurting Microsoft's underside line. The company said that gross sales of its Office merchandises among consumers dropped 39% inch the most recent quarter. The company blamed most of the diminution on the fact that the former year's third-quarter results were significantly boosted by gross that had been postponed under an Office 2007 ascent program.

Still, consumer gross sales of Office have got shown no growing over the past three quarters, Microsoft said. The problem: Microsoft's Office gross typically leaps when a new version is introduced, then quickly tapers off.

With Equipt, Microsoft is hoping to widen the consistent gross watercourse provided by commercial Office licencees to the consumer market, and it's hoping that mundane users will see adequate value in the offering to waive free software.

"We establish from our research that when you convey these classes together and maintain them automatically updated, a subscription theoretical account do a batch of sense," said Gordon.