A massive development in the US tech giant Microsoft can be observed from April 1, 2024, when it announced the separation of the Teams app from Office 365 globally.
Why the separation?
The European Commission, since 2020, has been investigating the Microsoft Teams and Office bundle based on a complaint filed by Salesforce-owned workspace messaging app Slack. The scrutiny of the bundle is regarding competition concerns. The complaint by rival companies was based on the claim that Microsoft was getting an unfair advantage by selling the two products as a bundle. 
For the past six months, Microsoft has been selling Teams and Office separately in the European Union (EU) countries to avoid antitrust fines.
In order to comply with the EU regulations and bring uniformity and convenience for customers, as pointed out by the EU and rival companies. The two products will be unbundled and sold separately.
Further, Microsoft has racked up 2.2 billion euros in EU antitrust fines for tying or bundling two or more products together in that past decade. If found guilty of antitrust breaches, it risks a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual turnover.
About Teams
The Teams app for chat and video conferencing became famous during the times of pandemic owing to its supreme quality. It was added to Office 365 in 2017 for free and subsequently replaced Skype for Business.
The new Microsoft offer
Starting from April 1, the users of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office will have the option to transition to new offerings which exclude Teams.
The company will allow its users to either continue with the current licensing deal or to renew, update or switch to the new offers.
The prices for Office without Teams will range between $7 to $54.75. The price will depend on the products included. While the Teams subscription will be $5.25 for commercial users. The prices will differ depending on the country and currency.
Further, Microsoft stated that It is 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. It also asserted that a new standalone subscription will be rolled out for Teams for only the abovementioned regions.
