Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced on Thursday that it will unbundle its chat and videoconference service Teams from the Microsoft 365 productivity suite, in an attempt to ease European Union (EU) antitrust concerns.
Beginning on October 1, the tech giant will sell the packages without Teams at a discounted price totaling a 24 euro ($26) per year reduction in the EEA (European Economic Area) and Swiss regions.
In July, EU regulators opened an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with other Office products, citing anti-competitive concerns, which follows a complaint submitted in 2020 by Salesforce-owned rival Slack to European authorities on competitiveness grounds.
EU officials expressed concern that Microsoft “may grant Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice on whether or not to include access to that product when they subscribe to their productivity suites and may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing offerings,” CNBC reported.
Teams software was introduced in 2017 and gained popularity during the pandemic due to its workplace text and video communication.
In March, Microsoft revealed that it intended to roll out a new version of Teams that will be twice as fast as its predecessor.
The subscription-based Microsoft 365 bundle is formerly known as Office 365.
Shares of Microsoft edged up $0.40 to $329.19 in early Thursday trading and have gained 37% year to date.
Contact Sean at sean@proactiveinvestors.com