Microsoft will let iPad users of its Office suite to create and edit documents for free instead of paying for a subscription, a move likely made to capture more mobile users.
The announcement is the latest, and one of the most dramatic, in Microsoft's new strategy of getting customers to use their services despite the device or operating system, instead of losing them to a proliferation of cheap or free alternatives, according to Reuters.
The dominance of Windows and Office on PCs has not translated to the mobile arena, where Apple's phones and tablets and Android devices reign supreme.
New Chief Executive Satya Nadella's first movie after taking over in February was to make Office available on the iPad, which has attracted 40 million new users, according to Reuters.
Downloading the free app allows users to read Office documents in Word, Excel and PowerPoint but users still had to buy a subscription, starting at $7 per month, to create or edit them.
Now that will be free.
"There's going to be a handful of tech companies that everyone depends on," for online software, said Maribel Lopez, a mobile tech analyst at Lopez Research, according to the Associated Press. "Microsoft wants to make sure they're one of them."
Microsoft also confirmed on Thursday that it was released Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for the iPhone for the first time ever. It will also roll out a test version of those apps for Android tablets, which should be released in early 2015, according to Reuters.
The largest software company in the world hasn't released fully touch-optimized Office apps for Windows yet, but it did say on Thursday that they would definitely be released with Windows 10 in 2015.
LinkedIn Corp had a big announcement on Thursday as well, saying that it would integrate Haiku Deck - a free alternative to Microsoft's PowerPoint - into its SlideShare platform. Some 70 million users create and share presentations by using the program, according to Reuters.
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