Yesterday, Microsoft announced its Teams app now has 20 million active daily users. This is up 54 percent since July, as Microsoft once again surpasses Slack. Following the news from Microsoft, Slack shares dropped as much as ten percent.
As the year comes to an end, it is clear, Microsoft is showing no signs of slowing down when it comes to Teams. And Hunter Willis, Product Marketing Manager, AvePoint and Teams expert, recently shared some predictions regarding Microsoft's "massive growth potential," as he put it. He continued, stating:
“We predict this impressive growth rate for Microsoft Teams will continue unabated in 2020. Twenty-million active daily users, that's an impressive number, but it represents only ten percent of the more than 200 million Office 365 commercial users"
"From this perspective, it's difficult to see how any enterprise collaboration software has stronger growth potential in 2020," he added. He also told me, Microsoft's made it clear - Teams is their number one focus within the Office 365 suite. Willis believes this is also evident from the rapid pace of innovation they've pumped out recently.
What's the Deal with Slack?
Back in July, Microsoft announced they had 13 million daily active users. The collab giant did so while Slack was in a quiet period before their IPO. In October, Slack said they reached 12 million daily active users. Since then, there's been drama between the two who both hope to lead the collaboration space.
Slack CEO, Stewart Butterfield, has been an outspoken critic of Microsoft, pushing back on how they report user stats, commenting, "Microsoft’s figures are a little bit misleading in terms of what they’re measuring." He further explained in front of a live audience last month in California, since Teams works with other Microsoft products, Microsoft's then 13 million daily active users might count users who do not use Teams daily.
