Microsoft today announced Office 365 Home Premium has passed the 1 million subscriber mark in just over 100 days, making it the best-selling Office edition yet. In fact, the new suite has been selling at more than one subscription every second on average since it launched.
Microsoft notes that Office 365 hit the 1 million number faster than other popular Internet services, including Hulu Plus, Spotify, Dropbox, Facebook, and Foursquare. In fact, according to this spiffy infographic, only Instagram got there sooner (by about a month):
On the one hand, none of these services are comparable to an Office suite. On the other hand, most of them are either free or related to media consumption, which many consumers value higher than productivity software.
Microsoft naturally sees this as confirmation that Office 365 is a hit: “At its core, Office exists to help people get things done, and people tell us they are choosing the service because it delivers full Office, it keeps them always up-to-date and it’s a fantastic value.”
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Microsoft released Office 365 Home Premium on January 29, offering consumers the cloud productivity suite for $100 per year ($8.33 per month). There’s also Office 365 University, which retails at $79.99 for a four-year subscription, or less than $20 per year while students are in school.
The big picture here is that Microsoft’s bet on a subscription model for its Office suite appears to be working, at least initially. It’s a big change for consumers to switch from paying a one-time fee to an annual fee, especially for software, but so far it appears that they’re okay with it.
For everyone else, there’s still Microsoft Office 2013. Microsoft, you can start slowly uncrossing your fingers and toes.
See also – Office 365 has revamped its business offerings to better match the feature mix it offers consumers and Microsoft to revamp Office Web Apps with Android tablet support, real-time collab in next 12 months
Top Image Credit: Robert Scoble
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