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If you were to buy Microsoft Office 2013 software, chances are that you will shell out more than what you paid for Office 2010. So, if you bought Office 2013 Home and Student Edition, it would cost $140 per PC and a pack of Office Professional 2013 costs $400. While Office 2013 is not yet available in India, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “Microsoft Singapore has revised the Indian rate card at which partners purchase their stock of Microsoft products. Price of the new Office will be known only closer to the time when it will become generally available.”
Subscription model
Also, with its new pricing, the company is pushing more users to go in for a subscription model, say industry watchers. Microsoft in the past had offered 2- or 3-year upgradeable licences for a package of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and other business software but will be slowly phasing out multi-user licences as the company is moving towards offering these solutions on the Internet, according to market watchers.
By using cloud computing technology, Microsoft is increasingly trying to sell licences for what it calls the Office 365 suite of software. This means Office 2013 will have single licences and need an Internet connection. While these price hikes come, according to Microsoft officials, with more choices, users are a miffed lot.
Amol Davi, who heads a Web start-up called Sparkzstudio says the hike in price rise for Office 2013 is not justified. “If they are talking about moving users to the Internet with a single licence, why can’t they offer this on packaged software which they have been doing in the past?” he asks.
The Microsoft spokesperson said the company believes in giving choices. “Comparing Office and Office 365 is like comparing oranges and apples. We have the separate pricing to give choice to the customers and they can pick and choose what software they want.”
While Microsoft is finalising its pricing strategy for Office 365, a look at its pricing gives an indication of what is to come in the future. There is also the issue of unlimited use once you buy the licensed copy, which you could use till Microsoft stopped supporting it (as in the case of Windows XP and Office 2003).
> venkatesh.ganesh@thehindu.co.in
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