MSFT Loves Android

If you visit the Google Play Store on your Android phone right now, you'll find no fewer than 85 apps from Microsoft. The list contains some serious heavyweights, including the entire Office suite, with Word, Excel, Outlook, and company boasting more than 10 million downloads apiece.

   

Even more impressive is how frequently those apps have been updated in the past year. Last year around this time, I surveyed the Microsoft app landscape on Android and found some serious gaps. The only option for working with Office files was the weak Office Mobile app, for example, and Outlook was still known by its old name, Acompli.

   

I've been using Microsoft apps and services on Android for the past nine months, and in that brief time the evolution has been impressive. Not surprisingly, I've become significantly more productive in that time.