Last month, the rumor mill churned out an interesting claim that stated Samsung's new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge would come with Office pre-installed, along with a free Office 365 subscription, and various other Microsoft apps. As it turns out, that rumor was partly accurate; both of the new handsets do come with some Microsoft apps - but not the full Office suite.
But earlier today, Samsung and Microsoft jointly announced a deal to pre-install Office "on select Samsung Android tablets".
In fact, the scale of Microsoft's deal-making has actually been much greater, as the company has now announced partnerships and agreements with ten additional hardware partners around the world, which will see each of them pre-installing Office onto their Android devices. In addition to Samsung, the full list of partners is:
- Dell (US)
- TrekStor (Germany)
- JP Sa Couto (Portugal)
- Datamatic (Italy)
- DEXP (Russia)
- Hipstreet (Canada)
- QMobile (Pakistan)
- Tecno (Africa)
- Casper (Turkey)
- Pegatron (Global)
Under these deals, each partner will pre-load Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote onto at least some of their Android devices, along with OneDrive and Skype.
Samsung said today that business customers who buy their devices from its B2B channels "will have access to three versions of Office 365 - Business, Business Premium and Enterprise - coupled with Samsung's KNOX security solution". This combination promises to "deliver secured mobile productivity for businesses", and should help to differentiate its offering from those of other companies.
Samsung has not yet revealed which of its devices will come with Microsoft Office onboard. Even though the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge won't have Office pre-installed, buyers of these handsets will get an added benefit in the form of 100GB of extra OneDrive storage for two years.
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