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If you thought that Microsoft Office comes with a big price label and free alternatives like KingSoft Office and OpenOffice and Google Docs also offer enough when it comes to word processing and spreadsheet stuff, you need to embrace yourself for this article which talks about the recent Microsoft Pricing strategy. ( In short, if you are in China, you might get licensed copy of Microsoft Office for as low as $29)

After a disappointing result earlier this month, Microsoft is now all set with cutting the price of Microsoft Office offering the free versions of Word, Excel, and other programs to head off competition from Google and other rivals that offer similar software at little or no cost.

While in countries like Brazil and China, the effective price is $100 which is down from $150.While the cut from $150 to $100 also sounds like a 33% cut in price, the most aggressive price cut has come in China, where Microsoft says 95% of Office installations have been pirated. Since it began testing a $29 offer in China last September, sales have soared more than 800%. The low price was “like taking firewood from under the cauldron” of piracy, says Liu Tianxiang, a vice-president with Beijing Federal Software, a Chinese software distributor. He figures Microsoft has sold 80,000 copies of Office in China since the trial started. Now Microsoft intends to make the low price permanent.

Definitely, would be interesting to see if this pricing strategy from Microsoft works the way they expect it to.

Via

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