Fu Yun Chi
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Microsoft (NASDAQ:) will sell its Teams chat and video app separately from its Office product globally, the U.S. tech giant said on Monday, six months after it separated the two products in Europe in an attempt prevent a possible EU Antitrust fine.
The European Commission is investigating the linking of Microsoft Office and Teams following a 2020 complaint from rival messaging app Slack, owned by Salesforce.
Teams, which was added free to Office 365 in 2017, subsequently replaced Skype for Business and became popular during the pandemic, thanks in part to video conferencing.
However, competitors argue that bundling the products together gives Microsoft an unfair advantage. The company began selling the two products separately in the EU and Switzerland on August 31 last year.
“To provide clarity to our customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to separate Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers around the world,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
“It also takes into account feedback from the European Commission, giving multinational companies greater flexibility when they want to standardize their procurement across different regions.”
Microsoft said in a blog post that it is introducing a new line of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 commercial suites that do not include Teams in regions outside the EEA (European Economic Area) and Switzerland, as well as a new standalone Teams offering for enterprise customers in those regions. regions.
Starting April 1, customers can continue, extend, upgrade, or upgrade to new offerings under their current license agreement.
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. Figures may vary by country and currency. The company has not disclosed prices for its current packaged products.
Splitting up Microsoft may not be enough to stave off EU antitrust charges likely to be brought against the company in the coming months as rivals criticize fee levels and the ability of its messaging services to run Office web apps on their own services. sources said.
Microsoft, which has received 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in EU antitrust fines over the past decade for merging or merging two or more products, risks a fine of up to 10% of its global annual turnover if found guilty in violation of antimonopoly laws. violations.
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