Do you need pre-installed Microsoft apps on Acer’s Android devices?

Microsoft and Acer are expanding their global partnership to increase the adoption of Microsoft productivity apps -- Office, Outlook, Skype. From the second half of 2016, Acer will begin pre-installing Microsoft apps on its portfolio of Android smartphones and tablets.

Microsoft and Acer are expanding their global partnership to increase the adoption of Microsoft productivity apps -- Office, Outlook, Skype.

Microsoft and Acer are expanding their global partnership to increase the adoption of Microsoft productivity apps -- Office, Outlook, Skype. From the second half of 2016, Acer will begin pre-installing Microsoft apps on its portfolio of Android smartphones and tablets.

Specifically, some Acer phones and tablets running Android will have app including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive and Skype installed and ready to use out-of-the-box.

This step could either be a boon of a real drawback, depending oh how much space there is in the device and how choosy you are about your apps. This however, isn't a new practice, companies have been pre-installing apps on devices since the desktop days. Referred to geeks as bloatware, all they do is hog space and sometimes even throttle the device's performance by running in the background.

One of the reasons Motorola and Nexus device are zippy, clean and regularly updated are because of they don't have any unnecessary apps or skin (launcher/themes) installed on factory reset.

Yes, for someone who needs to just shove a SIM into the phone and get down to work, the suite of pre-installed Microsoft apps could be helpful, but for someone who's prefer the Gmail or Inbox app, having or not having the Outlook app in the drawer makes no difference. We do hope that there is an option to uninstall these apps unlike the few apps that phone come installed with -- you never will use -- and can't uninstall.