Microsoft Decouples Teams from Office Suite Globally
In a strategic move, Microsoft has announced that its chat and video application, Teams, will now be available separately from its Office suite worldwide. This decision comes after the company began offering Teams independently in the European Union and Switzerland on October 1, 2020, to avoid potential antitrust fines.
The European Commission has scrutinized Microsoft’s practice of bundling Office and Teams since a complaint by Slack, a workspace messaging app owned by Salesforce, in 2020. Teams, which was integrated into Office 365 at no additional cost in 2017, swiftly gained popularity, especially during the pandemic for its video conferencing capabilities. However, competitors have argued that this bundling provided Microsoft with an unfair market advantage.
Aiming to provide greater clarity and flexibility for customers, Microsoft is extending its unbundling policy globally. “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,” said a spokesperson from Microsoft. The move is also in response to feedback from the European Commission, offering multinational companies more options for standardizing their purchases across different regions.
Microsoft revealed in a blog post that it would introduce new commercial Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites without Teams for regions outside the EEA and Switzerland. Additionally, a new standalone Teams offering for Enterprise customers will be available in those regions. Starting April 1, existing customers can maintain their current licensing agreements or opt for the new offerings.
For new commercial customers, prices for Office suites without Teams will range from $7.75 to $54.75, depending on the product tier, while the standalone Teams option will be priced at $5.25. These prices may vary based on country and currency, and although Microsoft has not disclosed the costs for the current bundled products, the unbundling initiative may not fully address EU antitrust concerns. Rivals continue to criticize the fees and interoperability of their messaging services with Office Web Applications.
With a history of antitrust fines totaling 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) over the past decade due to product tying or bundling, Microsoft could face a fine of up to 10% of its global annual turnover if found guilty of antitrust breaches. The EU is expected to send antitrust charges to Microsoft in the coming months.
