Microsoft share price: Company extends Free Office 365 subscriptions to students outside US

Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), the world’s largest software company, has extended its offer of free Office 365 subscriptions to students outside the US, in its latest move to get more people to use its productivity suite. The Redmond-based company announced the move on Monday, saying that the offer was available to students and teachers in all countries, where Office 365 was available.

“That includes the 5.5 million eligible students in Australia, the nearly 5 million eligible students in Germany, 7 million more in Brazil, 1.3 million at Anadolu University in Turkey, every student in Hong Kong and millions more,” the company wrote on the official Office blog.
Schools will still have to buy an Office license, but once they do, students and teachers will be able to sign up to the service by entering a school-provided email address. Every subscription offers installation of the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access and Publisher on up to five PCs or Mac computers and up to five mobile devices such as iPad, Android and Windows tablets. The offer also includes1TB of storage on Microsoft’s OneDrive service and access to Office Online for in-browser editing, collaboration and co-authoring.

The service has been available to schools in the US since 2013. Earlier this month Microsoft announced free Office 365 subscriptions for all public school students and teachers in New York.
In yesterday’s trading, Microsoft shares closed 0.1 percent lower at $44.09. The stock has fallen 5.1 percent since the start of the year, trimming the company’s market capitalisation to $362.2 billion.
According to the Financial Times, the 31 analysts offering 12 month price targets for Microsoft have a median target of $50.00, with a high estimate of $58.00 and a low estimate of $38.00. As of February 14, 2015, the consensus forecast amongst 38 polled investment analysts covering Microsoft has it that investors should hold their position in the company. This stance has been maintained since 27 January, when the sentiment of investment analysts deteriorated from “outperform”.
As of 15:12 GMT, Wednesday, 25 February, Microsoft Corporation share price is $43.93.