Another data point in the battle for the postnormal office: it’s been reported with the release of KitKat Google is shipping Quickoffice preinstalled on new smartphone and tablets. Note that Quickoffice — the office productivity suite that Google acquired in June 2012 that allows creation, editing and sharing of Microsoft Office documents — has already been available for free download in the Google Apps store, but being preinstalled means Android users with new devices will simply click on docs and they will open: why would they use Microsoft tools?
Also note that using Microsoft Office on Android still requires an Office 365 subscription, so now they are the only one still charging to edit documents, while Apple and Google are operating in the postnormal (see Apple moves to edge out Microsoft Office and Google Drive).
One of my predictions for 2014: Microsoft will develop and release a free version of Mobile Office that provides more-or-less equivalent functionality of Quickoffice and iWork, but not until the new CEO, whoever that turns out to be, decides that using Office as bait to sell Surface isn’t working. That could be late in 2014.
