Microsoft Corp made its popular Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications available for free on Android tablets on Thursday, marking the latest step in its drive to get as many mobile customers as possible using its software. It also released an app for its popular Outlook email program to run on Apple Inc's iPhone and iPad, hoping to attract the millions of users familiar with Outlook from their work desktops. The new releases are the latest gambits in Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella's attempt to wrest back the initiative in the battle for mobile users, where Microsoft has fallen behind Apple and Google Inc. Nadella broke with decades of tradition last March by releasing a free, touch-friendly version of Office for Apple's iPad, before such software was even available for Microsoft's Windows devices.



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