From April 1, customers can continue, renew, update or switch to the new offerings from their current license agreement. (Photo: Reuters)
Microsoft will sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office product globally, the US tech giant said on Monday, six months after it unbundled the two products in Europe in a bid to avoid a possible antitrust fine from the EU.
The European Commission has been investigating Microsoft’s linking of Office and Teams since a 2020 complaint from rival messaging app Slack, owned by Salesforce.
Teams, which was added to Office 365 for free in 2017, subsequently replaced Skype for Business and became popular during the pandemic thanks in part to its video conferencing.
However, rivals said packaging the products together gives Microsoft an unfair advantage. The company started selling the two products separately in the EU and Switzerland on October 1 last year.
“To ensure clarity for our customers, we are expanding the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers worldwide,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
“This also addresses feedback from the European Commission by offering multinational companies more flexibility when looking to standardize their purchasing across different regions.”
Microsoft said in a blog post that it is introducing a new range of commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites that do not include Teams in regions outside the EEA (European Economic Area) and Switzerland, as well as a new standalone Teams offering for Enterprise customers in those areas. Regions.
From April 1, customers can continue, renew, update or switch to the new offerings from their current license agreement.
For new commercial customers, prices for Office without Teams range from $7.75 to $54.75 depending on the product, while Teams Standalone costs $5.25. The figures may differ per country and currency. The company did not reveal prices for its current packaged products.
Microsoft’s unbundling may not be enough to avoid EU antitrust charges that are likely to be sent to the company in coming months, as rivals criticize the level of fees and the ability of their messaging services to work with Office Web Applications in their own services. sources said.
Microsoft, which has faced €2.2 billion in antitrust fines in the EU over the past decade for linking or bundling two or more products, faces a fine of as much as 10% of its annual global turnover if found guilty of antitrust. breaches.
First print: April 1, 2024 | 7:06 PM IST