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The
European Commission has been investigating Microsoft's tying of
Office and Teams since a 2020 complaint by Salesforce-owned
competing workspace messaging app Slack.
Teams, which was added to Office 365 in 2017 for free,
subsequently replaced Skype for Business and became popular
during the pandemic due in part to its video conferencing.
Rivals, however, said packaging the products together gives
Microsoft an unfair advantage. The company started selling the
two products separately in the EU and Switzerland on Aug. 31
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," a
Microsoft spokesperson said.
"Doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission
by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they
want to standardize their purchasing across geographies."
Microsoft said in a blogpost that it was introducing 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, and also a new standalone Teams offering
for Enterprise customers in those regions.
Starting April 1, customers can either continue with their
current licensing deal, renew, update or switch to the new
offers.
For new commercial customers, prices for Office without Teams
range from $7.75 to $54.75 depending on the product while Teams
Standalone will cost $5.25. The figures may vary by country and
currency. The company did not disclose prices for current
packaged products.
Microsoft's unbundling may not be enough to stave off EU
antitrust charges which will likely be sent to the company in
the coming months as rivals criticise the level of the fees and
the ability of their messaging services to function with Office
Web Applications in their own services, sources said.
Microsoft, which has racked up 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion)
in EU antitrust fines in the past decade for tying or bundling
two or more products together, risks a fine of as much as 10% of
its global annual turnover if found guilty of antitrust
breaches.
($1 = 0.9265 euros)
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Jason Neely)
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