Microsoft launches Office 365 in 10 new markets, bringing total to 150

Microsoft today announced Office 365 is now available in 10 new countries: Bhutan, Cambodia, Greenland, Guadeloupe, Laos, Maldives, Martinique, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Vatican City. This brings the total for Office 365 to 150 markets, with support for 44 languages.

Even after a quarter of a century, Office is still incredibly important to Microsoft’s bottom line. Office 365 is a prime example of the company successfully transitioning from a traditional software model to a subscription revenue stream. Last quarter, the company added 0.9 million subscribers for a total of 24 million. Office commercial products and cloud services revenue grew 5 percent, with Office 365 revenue up 51 percent.

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Microsoft estimates that over 1.2 billion people around the world use Office. That figure encompasses those who use the software suite at home, at work, and/or at school.

But Microsoft is most focused on growing Office 365 availability, since that’s the money-maker. This map shows the remaining countries that have yet to come into the fold:

Adding the 10 latest countries wasn’t as simple as flipping a switch. The Office team explains:

As our service expands, we are mindful of the incredible and increasing diversity of Office users. This latest market expansion required innovative engineering work to create new languages, cultures and currencies. Our team works tirelessly to meet the highest levels of security, compliance and feature parity so that we can deliver the same first-class experience in Office 365 to every market where it’s offered.

It’s worth underlining that Microsoft is using the word “market” and not “country” on purpose. There are 196 countries in the world today, but the company plans to launch Office 365 in “a further 97 markets over the next year.” That would bring the total to 247 markets — the extra markets are differentiated by certain cultural and language differences that require more work on Microsoft’s part, even if they are part of the same geographic country.