Bangalore: The year 2013 has been a pretty busy year for Microsoft and a lot has happened since its release of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 in 2012; which was a huge year for them. Microsoft went from being a software company to a “devices and services” company, as said by the then-CEO Steve Ballmer. Now that, another exciting year is coming to an end, Microsoft’s fortunes in 2013 gave us some insight into what the creator of Windows, Office and Xbox will do to stay in this increasingly competitive game.

The 10 most interesting and major events that took place in Microsoft during the year 2013 are given below as compiled by Mashable.

#1 Office 365 and the Subscription Model

Office 365 (a.k.a Office 2013), the first version of Microsoft Office for Windows 8 brought about a bunch of changes such a being completely tailor-made for touch interface, cloud and social networks – the same things behind the philosophy of Windows 8. But the most interesting change was the business model itself, Office was no longer a standalone app but rather a subscription based online office. With this new model, users no longer needed to pay the price for the complete software package which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint; instead they can be subscribed on a monthly or yearly basis as per one’s requirements and convenience.

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