Software giant Microsoft claims that consumers are taking to subscription models in a big way with the news that it has sold more than one million subscriptions for Office 365 Home Premium since its launch in January.
The company claims that "the new Office" has become the best-selling version of Microsoft Office ever, with more than 20 million copies - including subscriptions - sold in total.
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It claims that it reached the magic number of one million subscriptions in just 100 days - faster than such online services as Spotify, Dropbox and Facebook took to reach the same figure.
The subscription version costs £7.99 per month, or £79.99 per year, with free automatic upgrades when new versions come out. The subscription entitles buyers to install the software on five devices including PCs, Macs and Microsoft tablet computers and Windows Phone smartphones.
The suite includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and the Access database. It also comes with 20GB of cloud storage via Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud service and 60 "world" calling minutes per month with Skype.
In comparison, the standard client version of Office costs £110, but is only valid for installation on one PC - a reduction from the three client devices the licence traditionally allowed.
Microsoft says that it wants to shift every standard-retail Office suite user over to a cloud-based service, but believes that this will take some time - not least because alienated customers could dump Microsoft altogether in favour of the free, open-source Libre Office package instead.
