Brussels:
US technology giant Microsoft said on Monday it would sell its chat and video app Teams globally separately from its Office products. The company split the two products in Europe six months ago to avoid possible EU antitrust fines.
The European Commission has been investigating Microsoft’s bundling of Office and Teams since a complaint from rival workspace messaging app Slack, owned by Salesforce, in 2020.
Teams was added to Office 365 for free in 2017, later replacing Skype for Business, and has become popular during the pandemic, in part because of its video conferencing capabilities.
However, rivals say packaging the products together gives Microsoft an unfair advantage. The company started selling these two products in the EU and Switzerland respectively on August 31 last year.
“To ensure clarity for customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams in M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers globally,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
“Doing so would also address feedback from the European Commission and provide greater flexibility to multinational companies when they want to standardize sourcing across regions.”
Microsoft said in a blog post that it is launching a new range of business Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites that exclude Teams in regions outside the EEA (European Economic Area) and Switzerland, and is also offering new ones for enterprise customers in these regions. Standalone Teams product. area.
Starting April 1, customers can continue their current license agreement, renew, update or switch to the new offer.
For new business customers, Office without Teams prices range from $7.75 to $54.75, depending on the product, while Teams Standalone costs $5.25. These numbers may vary by country and currency. The company did not disclose the price of the current packaged products.
Microsoft’s breakup may not be enough to avoid EU antitrust charges, which are likely to be sent to the company in the coming months, as rivals criticize fee levels and the fact that its messaging service runs on its own alongside Office Web Apps capabilities, sources said.
Microsoft, which has been hit with EU antitrust fines of up to 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) over the past decade for bundling two or more products together, would face as much as its global annual sales if found guilty. 10% fine for violations.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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