Redmond, Washington — Late last year, Microsoft spread-out the availability of its Office Web Apps to 15 additional countries. Now, in a post on the Office Blog over the weekend, the Microsoft’s Office Web Apps team has announced another bump — this time by a whopping 150 additional countries.
According to Microsoft’s announcement, Office Web Apps becomes available in 150 new countries including India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand and more. In addition, from now on people in these nations can use Office Web Apps to view, edit and share Office documents on Windows Live SkyDrive and Hotmail.
The company also mentioned that by next month its Web Apps will hit “all the remaining markets in Central and South America.”
The free service, which contains Web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, was launched by Microsoft in June of last year. Microsoft said the Office Web Apps allow “users to view, edit and share Office documents from any computer with a browser and internet connection.” That makes it very easy for someone to have a quick look over a document with just an Internet connection.
Furthermore, in addition to creating documents via the Office component of Windows Live, Office Web Apps exist on Facebook through Docs.com, as well as with some recent integration that utilizes the hosted productivity tools to open up attachments. That same functionality is also built into Hotmail, where it was seeing 500 percent growth (month by month) in use, according to stats Microsoft released late last year.
Office Web Apps is just the latest in a series of Microsoft’s Web properties to vie for the important “worldwide” moniker. The post also states that Office Web Apps will fully rolled out worldwide by March. Right now, more than 30 million people are using Microsoft’s online suite — that number will obviously increase now that the remaining geographical roadblocks are being removed.
Here is a brief history of OWA worldwide availability:
June 7, 2010: The Office Web Apps launched in the U.S., Canada, UK, and Ireland.
September 23, 2010: Added Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Russia, and Switzerland.
December 6, 2010: Added China, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong SAR, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and Turkey.
February 3, 2011: Added more than 150 additional countries released (including India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, and Thailand).
March, 2011: The Office Web Apps will become available worldwide with roll-out to all remaining markets in Central and South America, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.
And there is a list of major milestones that Office Web Apps reached in 2010, as well as if you are new to Web Apps, Microsoft posted some tips on its Web site.