The “new” Teams is very popular, Microsoft states in a recent blog post. The videoconferencing application now has more than 320 million users worldwide.
According to Microsoft, tens of millions of end users began using Teams this year. Also, more than 2,000 different apps can now be downloaded from the Teams app store.
This is in conjunction with more than 145,000 custom apps that companies have developed for using Teams themselves.
New Teams app a success
The huge increase in Teams users this year may have been caused by the launch this year of the revamped Teams app for Windows and macOS.
Since the launch of this latest version, Microsoft has added a lot of additional functionality to it. Recent additions included the introduction of the generative AI tool Copilot within Teams. In addition, the latest version of Teams is said to be up to two times faster than the classic version and takes up less than half the original storage space.
Microsoft still offers the classic version of Microsoft Teams, but no new functionality is currently being added to it. Meanwhile, this version has also been given an end-of-life date of the end of June 2024.
Uncertainty for 2024
Whether the popularity of Teams will continue to grow in the coming year is not yet entirely certain. This is especially in doubt because the European Commission has yet to decide whether Microsoft should remove its Teams solution from the Microsoft 365 (business) bundle within the EU. The tech giant might be abusing its own competitive position to get Teams to users.
Microsoft is already trying to respond to this, including by announcing last October that Microsoft Teams will have its own subscription and will not be tied to the Microsoft 365 business licenses. However, it is still unclear whether this is enough to convince the EU of its good intentions.
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