To ease antitrust concerns, tech giant Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) will separate its chat and video app Teams from its Office product to enhance compatibility with rival products. The proposed changes came a month after the European Commission started an investigation into Microsoft’s integration of Teams into Office 365, following a complaint by Salesforce-owned (CRM) workspace messaging app Slack in 2020.
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The changes will come into effect from October 1 and will apply in the EU and Switzerland. Microsoft’s commercial business core enterprise customers in Europe will be allowed to switch to a version of Office that will exclude Teams. The Office product without Teams will be at a price of €2 per month cheaper than with Teams. New enterprise customers would be able to buy Teams standalone and separately for €5 per month.
While the European Commission took note of these changes, it refused to comment on the matter. Nanna-Louise Linde, Microsoft’s VP for European government affairs stated that with the unbundling of Teams, the company was attempting to address EU concerns so that “customers should be able to choose a business suite without Teams at a price less than those with Teams included, and that we should do more to make interoperability easier between rival communication and collaboration solutions and Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites.”
Analysts are bullish about MSFT stock with a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 31 Buys, two Holds, and one Sell.
