Exterior view of the Microsoft Times Square building on January 29, 2023 in New York City.
Kenna Betancourt | Corbis News | Getty Images
microsoft US tech giant sells chat and video app Teams globally separately from Office products, six months after bundling the two products in Europe to avoid possible EU antitrust fines Then he announced.
The European Commission has been investigating Microsoft’s partnership with Office and Teams since a 2020 complaint by Salesforce-owned rival workspace messaging app Slack.
Teams was added to Office 365 for free in 2017, later replaced Skype for Business, and gained popularity during the pandemic thanks to its video conferencing capabilities.
But rivals argued that packaging these products together gave Microsoft an unfair advantage. The company began selling the two products separately in the EU and Switzerland on August 31 last year.
“To be clear to our customers, we are expanding on the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to our customers around the world,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
“This will give multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardize their purchasing across regions, and will also allow us to respond to feedback from the European Commission.”
In a blog post, Microsoft introduces a new lineup 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 new standalone Teams products for enterprise customers in these regions. Then he said. region.
Starting April 1, customers can continue with their current license agreement, renew, renew, or switch to a new offer.
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. This number may vary by country and currency. The company has not disclosed the price of its current packaged products.
Microsoft’s unbundling could come to the company in the coming months as competitors criticize its pricing levels and the ability of its messaging services to work with its own Office Web applications. It may not be enough to avoid antitrust charges. officials said.
Microsoft has collected EU antitrust fines of 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) over the past decade for tying or bundling two or more products, leading to antitrust convictions. If they do, they risk being fined as much as 10% of their global annual sales. Violate.
