Microsoft notified its OEM PC partners this week that it is starting to phase out Office Starter 2010, a stripped-down bundle of Word and Excel that it provided to PC makers to preload on new machines. Microsoft was hoping Office Starter customers would decide to “trade up” and activate a more expensive, more complete Office 2010 version once they try Starter.

The word from my contacts is Microsoft will be guiding its OEMs to rely on Office Web Apps as the replacement for Starter, going forward. Office Web Apps are the Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote that Microsoft announced in 2008.