Silhouettes of laptop users are seen next to a screen projection of Microsoft logo in this photo illustration.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
U.S. tech giant Microsoft on Thursday said it should unbundle its chat and videoconference service Teams from its Microsoft 365 productivity suite, in a bid to allay European Union antitrust concerns.
Starting Oct. 1 this 12 months, Microsoft will sell the packages without Teams at a reduced price totaling a 24 euro ($26) per 12 months reduction in the EEA (European Economic Area) and Swiss regions. The subscription-based bundled suite, formerly often called Office 365, previously prized Teams because the crown jewel of its workplace-geared app offerings, which include Word and Excel.
The Teams software debuted in 2017 and gained ground with users because it facilitated workplace text and video communication in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. Microsoft in March said it intended to roll out a new edition of Teams that can be twice as fast as its predecessor.
European Union regulators had in July opened an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with other Office products, citing anti-competitive concerns. The probe marked the primary EU antitrust investigation into Microsoft in over a decade, with EU officials expressing concern that the Redmond tech titan “may grant Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the alternative on whether or not to include access to that product once they subscribe to their productivity suites and can have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing offerings.”
Microsoft on Thursday pledged to also enhance resources on interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Office 365. It is going to also create mechanisms to host Office web applications inside competing apps and services.
“We appreciate the clarity that has emerged on several of the concerns from extensive and constructive discussions with the European Commission. With the advantage of this clarity, we consider it is vital that we start to take meaningful steps to address those concerns,” Nanna-Louise Linde, vice chairman of Microsoft European Government Affairs, said Thursday in a blogpost.
“We consider these changes balance the interests of our competitors with those of European business customers, providing them with access to the very best possible solutions at competitive prices,” she added, recognizing that the EU investigation is currently in its early stages.
An EU spokesperson told CNBC: “We pay attention to Microsoft’s announcement. We’ve no further comment to make.”
— CNBC’s Silvia Amaro contributed to this report