Microsoft Gains One Million Indian Outlook Users


Bangalore: Microsoft gained one million users from India for its new e-mail service Outlook.com, reports The Business Line.

The software giant was toying with the idea of unleashing a robust, integrated e-mail service for quite some time since Hotmail lost its sizzle and its attempt to take on the rivals like Gmail failed.

It seems that Microsoft’s efforts in integrating social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, mail accounts like Hotmail and professional networking sites like LinkedIn with Outlook is finally bearing fruits. Outlook.com which opened up for the users since August this year on a preview basis, urging the users to test it and move over to it, has already won more than 25 million users worldwide, and in India alone it sports more than a million users. Among others, Skype and SkyDrive, are also integrated with Outlook.com

 The automatic update of the present user accounts to the fuller version of Outlook is slated to happen sometime in 2013.  

“India is an interesting market for us because it’s one of the few markets where Hotmail was number one and that really switched over to Gmail. About three-four years ago, Google search, Gmail and Orkut were very strong, not to mention, Android growing like mad. It was Google’s best market in many ways,” Microsoft General Manager Brian Hall told Business Line. “Now we see an opportunity to win people back.”

Outlook.com will offer free e-mail accounts like most other Web-based mail service providers, and taking cue from its rival Gmail, it intends to provide unlimited storage space to every user, “Our Inbox storage is unlimited. We add a certain amount every month as the user approaches the limit. Gmail is 10 GB, one limit for everyone,” Brian Hall said.

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