Redmond: Microsoft has announced its decision to offer its chat and video app, Teams, as a standalone product separate from its Office suite on a global scale. This move comes in response to antitrust concerns, following the company’s unbundling of the two products in Europe six months ago to avoid potential penalties from the European Union.
The European Commission initiated an investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of Office and Teams in 2020, following a complaint by Slack, a competing workspace messaging app owned by Salesforce.
Initially introduced to Office 365 users for free in 2017, Teams has since replaced Skype for Business and gained significant popularity, particularly during the pandemic, owing to its advanced video conferencing features. Critics argue that Microsoft’s bundling strategy provided the company with an unfair competitive advantage. Consequently, Microsoft began offering Teams and Office as separate products in the European Union and Switzerland starting August 31 of last year.
“To ensure clarity for our customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers globally”, stated a Microsoft spokesperson.
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In a recent blog post, Microsoft announced the introduction of new commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites that exclude Teams for regions outside the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland. Additionally, a standalone Teams offering will be available for enterprise customers in these regions. Starting April 1, customers will have the option to continue with their existing licensing agreements, renew, update, or transition to the new offerings.
For new commercial customers, the pricing for Office without Teams varies between $7.75 and $54.75, depending on the specific product. Meanwhile, the standalone Teams package is priced at $5.25. Pricing details for existing bundled products were not disclosed by the company.
Despite Microsoft’s unbundling efforts, the company may still face EU antitrust charges in the coming months. Rivals have criticized the fee structure and questioned the compatibility of their messaging services with Microsoft’s Office Web Applications.
Having incurred 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in EU antitrust fines over the past decade for bundling multiple products, Microsoft could potentially face a fine of up to 10% of its global annual turnover if found guilty of antitrust violations.
