Millions of beta users help Microsoft deliver the best experience for getting things done across the PC, phone and browser.

NEW YORK — June 15, 2010 — Today, Microsoft Corp. announced the worldwide availability of Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010. Consumers can now purchase Office 2010 at more than 35,000 retail stores across the globe, such as Best Buy, Fnac, Harvey Norman and PC World; through online retailers, including Amazon.com; and direct from Microsoft at Office.com.

Office 2010 can also be purchased with the most popular desktops and laptops from leading PC makers including Acer Inc., Asus, Dell Inc., HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony Corp. In the next year, more than 100 million PCs will ship with Office 2010 preloaded, which can easily be activated with the purchase of any one of the three versions of Office 2010, including Office Home and Student 2010, Office Home and Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010.

“Working with major retail partners and PC makers, we’ve made dramatic changes in the way we deliver Office 2010 to give consumers more buying choice, making it easier than ever to unlock the power of Office on new and existing PCs,” said Stephen Elop, president, Microsoft Business Division. “For the first time, people can purchase a Product Key Card at retail to activate Office 2010 preloaded on new PCs. For those who want to download Office 2010 direct from Office.com for an existing PC, the new Click-to-Run technology will have them up and running in a matter of minutes.”

Office 2010 Represents a Great Growth Opportunity for Microsoft and Its Partners

“Recent comScore Tech Metrix™ data confirms that more than 1 billion PCs worldwide have Office software installed, making it the most widely used productivity suite in the world,” said Mike Hurt, senior vice president of comScore. “This milestone helps illustrate the importance that software products like Microsoft Office have played in shaping the digital world to date.”

Considering there are approximately 1.8 billion Internet users worldwide, Microsoft and its channel partners see an incredible opportunity to deliver Office 2010 to existing and new Office customers around the world.

From a survey of Office 2010 beta users, Microsoft found that 75 percent say they plan to buy Office 2010 within six months. The Office 2010 beta program had more than 9 million downloads — more than six times the size of the 2007 Microsoft Office beta program — indicating strong consumer interest in Office 2010.

“Following the great response to the Office 2010 beta and the success of Windows 7, we predict this will be the biggest consumer release of Office, ever,” Elop said.
Productivity Solutions Across the PC, Phone and Browser

Throughout its development cycle, customer feedback has been critical to the improvements found in Office 2010. Based on this valuable input, Microsoft has made considerable enhancements to help users do the following:

Create great-looking documents and presentations. Express creativity in PowerPoint 2010 presentations with new video and photo editing features. Add extensive text effects and table formatting options in Word 2010. Reveal important trends in data with Sparklines in Excel 2010. OneNote 2010 makes everything you need simple to find, organize and share.

Connect and work together more simply. Advanced e-mail management and calendaring capabilities in Outlook 2010 and the new Outlook Social Connector help people stay productive and in touch with personal and business networks. Work with others more efficiently using new co-authoring in Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010 and OneNote 2010. Deliver presentations over the Web with new PowerPoint Broadcast Slideshow.

Get things done from virtually anywhere. With Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps — the online companions to Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — people have the freedom to save documents directly from Office 2010 to Windows Live SkyDrive, then view, edit and share those documents in the cloud. The Office Web Apps preserve the look and feel of Office documents, so valuable content and formatting are not compromised while moving between the PC, phone and browser*

Office Mobile 2010 also is available from Windows® Phone Marketplace for all Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. People using Office Mobile 2010 can perform lightweight editing of Office documents and take notes on the go, or work on Office documents stored on their phone or attached to an e-mail. Today, Office 2010 is available in 10 languages and will expand to 94 languages.

“For information workers the lines between home and office are becoming blurred; in return for flexible working practices that fit better with lifestyle employees are prepared to spread their working hours. Facilitating this involves accessing documents and information from a range of devices, so providing a consistent experience is necessary. With Office 2010 Microsoft has done a lot to help this.

First, being free, Microsoft Office Starter will ensure that basic productivity tools, that are familiar to many from their work place experience, are freely available on many consumer PCs. Second, Office Web Apps makes the basic office capabilities freely available to anyone with an internet connection and facilitates that sharing of documents. With the Office 2010 announcement Microsoft is taking both OpenOffice and Google Apps head-on. This release should ensure Microsoft remains the dominant vendor in the productivity tools space for the foreseeable future”. Bob Tarzey, Analyst & Director, Quo Circa

This social media news release and more content is available at: -
http://blogit.realwire.com/?ReleaseID=21358