The tech giant is hoping to sweeten the deal of the smartphone and the application suite with a new bundle.
In what appears to be a move to try to drive more smartphone sales, Microsoft is adding free software including a year of the Office 365 suite, to people who purchase either of two Lumia smartphone models.
The two models that will include a free subscription to the app suite are: Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL.
The two are being bundled together so that anyone who purchases one of those two smartphone models will be able to receive a year of Office 365 for free. Among the apps that are included in the suite are Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Typically, subscribing to these apps for a year would cost the user $70. This isn’t the first time this type of offer has been made by Microsoft in order to drive sales of the devices. Last year, a similar bundle was offered when the Lumia 640 and Lumia 640 XL devices were purchased.
Beyond the free year of Office 365 subscription, it also includes a terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage for a year.
Anyone who has purchased a Lumia 950 or Lumia 950 XL between November 20, 2015 right through to June 30, 2016 will be able to take advantage of this deal, provided the devices are registered within that time frame. The offer is being made to consumers in the United States, as well as those in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, France and the United Kingdom.
These models will also be sold with a free Microsoft Display Dock when an unlocked version of the smartphone is purchased. That offer, however, runs only until the end of January, while supplies last (whichever is sooner). The use of the Display Dock, while Continuum technology enabled, allows users to be able to use their smartphones to work on their Office based documents.
The Lumia 950 isn’t new to Microsoft incentives to try to boost the sales. While the Office 365 bundle is the most recent, the devices were also sold with a $50 discount offer last fall.
For instance, the Skype team has also been working on the communications app over the last months and have boosted the number of features available to users. For example, the most recent version now makes it possible for users to “leave a message” in video form for other Skype users whose statuses are offline or not available.