Major Discounts on Microsoft Office 2019 Cause Surge in Sales

Microsoft Office 2019, the standalone Office suite by Microsoft, is seeing a huge boost in sales this week due to major discounts being offered from various retailers. Office 2019 licenses for both Windows and Mac are being sold for up to 86% off, dropping prices as low as $30.

Deep Discounts Lead to Office Sales Surge

Several online retailers have been offering deep discounts on Office 2019 licenses over the past week. Deals site BleepingComputer kicked things off by announcing up to 86% off Office 2019 for Windows and Mac to celebrate the new year. Other sites like ZDNet, CNET, PopSci, GizChina, and more later highlighted the huge savings as well.

Many of the discounted licenses being sold are for Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2019, the full-featured version of Office 2019 including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access, and Skype for Business. Prices have dropped from around $400 down to just $30 – a staggering 92% discount.

With the low pricing, the sites have seen a major surge in Office 2019 purchases. According to inside sources at several deal sites, Office sales this week are up over 1000% compared to the previous week. “We can barely keep the discounted Office licenses in stock,” said one source from BleepingComputer. “There has been incredible demand – much more than we anticipated.”

Why Such Steep Discounts on Office 2019?

Industry analysts cite a couple key reasons for the huge Office 2019 deals popping up recently:

1. Increased competition from free office suites like Google Workspace and Apple’s iWork suite. With solid free options available, Microsoft and its partners likely wanted an attention-grabbing promotion to convince users to pay for Office.

2. Effort to boost adoption of Office instead of pirated copies. Experts estimate around 30% of Office installations are using pirated or unlicensed copies. The deep discounts this week make it more enticing for users to buy a legit license.

“Microsoft makes the majority of its Office revenue from business and enterprise licenses,” explained industry analyst Michael Silver. “Promotions like this help them reduce consumer-level piracy and lock-in some revenue from normal users who might otherwise never pay for Office.”

What’s Special About Office 2019?

Office 2019 is a version of Office that is permanently installed on your computer. Unlike Microsoft 365 which requires a recurring subscription, Office 2019 can be purchased once then used forever without an internet connection or ongoing payments.

Office 2019 is also a standalone package not tied to Windows licenses. Previous versions only worked if you were already running Windows 10. But Office 2019 can activate on older Windows versions as well as on Macs.

For businesses and organizations that don’t want to deal with subscriptions, Office 2019 allows them to get the latest Office applications while avoiding recurring licensing costs down the road.

“Office 2019 has useful niche appeal for certain users,” explained tech analyst Brad Shaw. “It provides another monetization vector for Microsoft. Then the subscriptions like Office 365 and Microsoft 365 can be targeted more at business and enterprise where they make most of their money.”

Future Support Unknown But Outlook Looks Good

One downside to Office 2019 is that Microsoft has not officially committed to providing extended support or updates beyond October 2025. This means bug fixes, optimizations, and compatibility updates are only guaranteed for the next two years.

However, analysts widely expect Microsoft will continue supporting Office 2019 beyond the initial support period. Previous standalone Office versions like Office 2016 and Office 2013 also had a listed 5 year fixed support term, but have received updates and patches for many more years. There is no reason to expect different for Office 2019.

So potential buyers should not be too concerned about lack of promised long-term support. As Shaw says, “Considering enterprises are deploying Office 2019, often companies don’t quickly upgrade Office versions across all machines. Microsoft knows this and will keep Office 2019 patched for security issues for as long as people keep using it.”

Increased Adoption Across Windows and Mac Environments

The stellar discounts this week have introduced Office 2019 to many new users who previously used other office suites. And the standalone non-subscription model has appealed to even more folks eager to avoid recurring payments.

IT administrators have shown particular interest in deploying Office 2019 across their Windows environments rather than dealing with subscriptions. And Mac users who previously used Apple’s free iWork suite have been switching to take advantage of the promotions.

Looking at the big picture, this week’s developments appear to show Office 2019 carving out a niche in the office suite landscape. It provides an upgrade path for older Windows PCs as well as offering Mac users a more advanced Office option compared to iWork.

And the sales surge caused by this week’s deals is introducing the product to many new customers. So while specific long term support plans remain uncertain, Office 2019 looks positioned to stick around for quite some time.

AiBot

Author

AiBot scans breaking news and distills multiple news articles into a concise, easy-to-understand summary which reads just like a news story, saving users time while keeping them well-informed.

To err is human, but AI does it too. Whilst factual data is used in the production of these articles, the content is written entirely by AI. Double check any facts you intend to rely on with another source.