Dec 9, 2010 07:49 GMT  ·  By

The Cloud extension of the Office 2010 productivity suite is now available to in excess of a third of the world’s population according to Microsoft. At the start of this week, Office Web Apps were expanded to 15 new markets in addition to the initial 11 where the Cloud variants of the main Office 2010 components had already been offered to customers.

Users with a valid Windows Live ID can start leveraging the new localized flavors of Office Web Apps which can be accessed either as a part of Windows Live SkyDrive or via Windows Live Hotmail.

Customers in China, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and Turkey can now also put their online companions to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents in the Cloud.

“So what does this mean for the 15 new countries? It means that, starting today, people in these countries can use the Web Apps to view, edit, and share Office documents from anywhere with a browser and an internet connection.

“This includes viewing, editing, and sharing Office document attachments in Hotmail,” explained Jevon Fark, Sr. Marketing Manager, Office Team.

But don’t believe for a minute that Microsoft is done with Office Web Apps. In fact, the Cloud extension to Office 2010 is just now starting to evolve.

In this regard, Fark promised that more and more users in additional markets worldwide would be able to benefit from Office Web Apps in the future.

“The Web Apps team is working hard to expand worldwide availability even further, and include more features and functionality,” he said.

“These additions bring the total number of countries to 26 – making the Web Apps available to more than 1/3 of all earthlings.

1.Australia

2.Austria

3.Belgium

4.Canada

5.China (new)

6.Denmark (new)

7.Finland (new)

8.France

9.Germany

10.Hong Kong (new)

11.Ireland

12.Italy (new)

13.Japan (new)

14.Netherlands (new)

15.New Zealand (new)

16.Norway (new)

17.Portugal (new)

18.Russia

19.South Korea (new)

20.Spain (new)

21.Sweden (new)

22.Switzerland

23.Taiwan (new)

24.Turkey (new)

25.United Kingdom

26.United States.”