Zoom’s videoconferencing service is deepening its integral role in life during the pandemic as tens of thousands more businesses and other users pay for subscriptions to get more control over their virtual meetings.

The surge in paying customers enabled Zoom to hail another quarter of explosive growth. The company on Monday reported that its revenue for the May-July period more than quadrupled from the same time last year to $663.5 million, boosted by a steadily rising number of users converting from the free to the paid version of Zoom’s service.

Zoom finished its fiscal second quarter with 370,200 customers with at least 10 employees, a gain of about 105,000 customers from the end of April. Just a year ago, Zoom only had 66,300 customers with at least 10 employees paying for subscriptions.

All that money pouring in helped Zoom earn nearly $186 million, or 66 cents per share, during its latest quarter, up from just $5.5 million at the same time last year.

“Organizations are shifting from addressing their immediate business continuity needs to supporting a future of working anywhere, learning anywhere, and connecting anywhere on Zoom’s video-first platform,” Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said.

Investors have latched on to Zoom too. After having already increased by fivefold so far this year, Zoom’s stock price is poised to climb to even loftier heights. The exuberant response to its quarterly report lifted the company’s shares by nearly 23% in Monday’s extended trading.

If the stock follows a similar arc during Tuesday’s regular trading session, Zoom for the first time will boast a market value of more than $100 billion — exceeding the combined value of two-storied automakers, General Motors and Ford, and two major airlines, American and United.

Back in early June, Zoom warned that it might suffer a wave of subscriber cancellations during the second half of the year if efforts to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus allowed more workers to return to offices. But the ongoing outbreak has prompted many major employers to keep their offices closed through the rest of the year and possibility into next summer, a development that could propel Zoom to even greater heights.

In a show of confidence, Zoom raised its revenue projection for its fiscal year ending in January to nearly $2.4 billion, up from roughly $1.8 billion that the San Jose, California, company predicted in early June. The forecast is now more than double the $910 million revenue that Zoom had anticipated as it began its fiscal year.

Zoom has been thriving largely because the worst pandemic in a century shut down large parts of the economy in March, with employers shuttering their offices and schools closing their campuses. That forced millions of workers and students to hop on to Zoom and other videoconferencing services to get their jobs and schoolwork done.

Zoom quickly emerged as the most accessible videoconferencing service, cementing itself as the pandemic’s most popular place to connect remotely for everything from virtual cocktail parties to complex court hearings, in addition to the daily grind of work.

The sudden demand seemed to catch Zoom off guard initially, leaving its service vulnerable to hackers and mischief-makers who exploited security weaknesses to barge into or snoop on meetings. Zoom says it believes it has closed most of the loopholes and eventually won back some school districts that temporarily abandoned the service because of security concerns.

More recently, Zoom suffered a major outage on the same say many schools were resuming online instruction after a summer break. Although the outage only lasted a few hours, the breakdown heightened awareness about society’s increasing reliance on Zoom.

source:AP

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Zoom gained huge traction in a short span of time as several people are working from home due to the coronavirus outbreak. The video conference app pulled in more than 200 million daily active users last month — significantly up from a maximum of 10 million users previously. Zoom app has been under fire over security concerns.

From schools/colleges and officials to various private/governments, various people have been using the app. Its key features such as being able to video-conference with up to 100 people for free (up to 500 participants in paid plans) and recording support make the Zoom app a great solution for virtual meetings using a desktop or smartphones.

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If you don't trust Zoom and are looking for capable alternatives, You can check out the top five free online meeting apps that are alternatives to the Zoom app to help with your video calling needs.

Top Free Online Meeting Apps

Cisco Webex Meetings

Cisco is offering free access to its Webex Meetings (highly enterprise-focused solution Cisco Webex) in all countries where it is available to support the work from home needs during the coronavirus outbreak. Despite being available as free, you'll get all enterprise features including unlimited usage with no time restrictions, support for up to 100 participants, and a toll dial-in in addition to Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) capabilities. All you need is to sign up on the Cisco Webex portal to get started with the Webex Meetings. The experience that's been offered by Cisco is nowhere limited when comparing with Zoom.

Google Hangouts

You can opt for Google Hangouts, which is also a decent, free alternative to Zoom. You can make video calls with up to 10 participants or chat with up to 150 participants at once. Google also allows you host video calls or talk with your colleagues through text messages using a mobile device. Further, being a Google product, Hangouts just needs your Gmail account to let you get started.

Skype Meet Now

Microsoft recently brought Skype Meet Now that serves as an alternative to Zoom. It works without requiring an account and supports up to 50 participants — all for free. You'll also get features such as the ability to record calls, blur background before entering the call, and screen sharing. Moreover, you just need to visit the dedicated webpage, to begin with, Skype Meet Now.

Microsoft Teams

If you don't want a solution just to make video calls, you can look at Microsoft Teams. It is also available for free during the pandemic. The free version brings unlimited chat and search, group and one-on-one audio and video calling, and 10GB of team file storage along with 2GB of personal file storage per person. If you already have an Office 365 account, you'll get real-time collaboration with Office apps for Web, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Discord

Discord has also emerged as a strong alternative to Zoom, its video conferencing capabilities that let you connect with up to 50 participants at once. The platform is popular amongst gamers, though you can use it as a tool to communicate with your office team or some friends. You can also download its mobile app to connect with your contacts using your smartphone. There are also features to share your screen or perform voice calls. Just like other free alternatives to Zoom, Discord provides video conferencing at no cost. You just need to sign up on the Discord site or through its app to get started with your virtual conferences.

You can also look as paid app an alternative to Zoom app as below:

You can get Google Hangouts Meet that is available for free for all G Suite users until July 1 and provides features such as up to 250 participants per call, live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain, and the ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive. There are also paid solutions such as Zoho Meeting and GoToMeeting that you can get for free under a trial.

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Several Zoom meetings involving Chinese users were "disrupted," the video messaging app acknowledged Thursday, after activists in the United States and Hong Kong revealed discussions on the platform of Beijing's deadly Tiananmen crackdown had been closed down.

The disclosure has sparked concerns that the American app, which has soared in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic, is bowing to the demands of authoritarian China at the expense of users in places where free speech is protected.

Unlike competitors such as Google and Facebook, Zoom is not banned in communist China, which uses its "Great Firewall" to scrub its internet and censor negative information.

But activists in the United States and Hong Kong complain they have been kicked out of their Zoom accounts after hosting online anniversary events marking Beijing's crushing of the pro-democracy uprising on June 4, 1989.

Zhou Fengsuo, a Tiananmen survivor now in living in the US, said Wednesday his account was suspended after his organisation Humanitarian China tried to connect more than 250 people, including users in the mainland, to commemorate the crackdown.

His account was reinstated after media reporting.

On Thursday, Lee Cheuk-yan, the organiser of Hong Kong's annual vigil for the victims of the crackdown, said he had been locked out of his account since 22 May after his group tried to host an online discussion on China's influence around the world.

"The account was suspended before the talk started. I've asked Zoom many times whether this is political censorship but it has never replied to me," Lee, chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance, told AFP.

His group is based in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous city that has free speech liberties unseen on the mainland, but which has been upended by a year of pro-democracy protests that have infuriated China.

After Zhou's suspension became public, Zoom said it had to obey any laws in the jurisdictions it operates in.

In an updated statement to AFP on Thursday, Zoom said it was hosting "complex, cross-border conversations, for which the compliance with the laws of multiple countries is very difficult".

"We regret that a few recent meetings with participants both inside and outside of China were negatively impacted and important conversations were disrupted," it added.

The California-based company said it was "committed to modifying its processes to further protect its users from those who wish to stifle their communications" but declined to give further details.

PEN America, a group that defends free speech, said Zoom users outside of mainland China should not find themselves censored by Beijing.

"We wouldn't tolerate it if a phone company cut off service for someone expressing their views in a conference call; we shouldn't tolerate it in the digital space either," CEO Suzanne Nossel said.

Earlier this week Zoom reported its earnings had soared in the quarter ending April 30 as both businesses and consumers, cooped up inside due to COVID-19 lockdowns, embrace the platform to meet virtually.

- Dilemma for US tech -

Zoom is the latest in a long line of western social media and tech companies who have found themselves struggling to deal with the demands of authoritarian governments in lucrative overseas markets.

Tech giants such as Google and Facebook have largely given up on trying to crack China given the censorship Beijing enforces on companies that operate inside its borders.

Apple in 2017 acknowledged that it bowed to Chinese law by removing apps for virtual private networks (VPNs) that let users evade local controls.

A decade earlier, Yahoo faced intense criticism and conceded wrongdoing after helping Chinese officials identify pro-democracy advocates who posted on online message boards.

The annual Tiananmen anniversary is an especially sensitive time for Beijing's leaders with the "Great Firewall" going into overdrive.

Authorities go to extraordinary lengths each year to ban commemorations of the crackdown, in which the military killed hundreds of unarmed protesters -- by some estimates, more than 1,000 -- who had packed the capital to seek reform.

HMD Global, “The Home Of Nokia Phones”, has raised $230 million in a “series A2” round of funding from some of its existing strategic partners, including Google, Qualcomm, and Nokia consumer division Nokia Technologies, along with undisclosed investors. The Finnish company stressed that this was the “first closing” of the round, suggesting more funding could be added at a later date.

A spokesperson also confirmed that HMD Global’s valuation has passed $1 billion. While Nokia no longer makes consumer devices, the brand is still synonymous with feature phones and smartphones, thanks to a licensing arrangement with HMD Global, a business vehicle founded in 2015 primarily to design and market Nokia-branded mobile phones, with Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile responsible for manufacturing.

A few months back, HMD Global unveiled its first 5G device, though the Nokia 8.3 has yet to make it to market. With another $230 million in the bank, HMD Global said it’s now able to “accelerate” its mission to make 5G smartphones accessible to more consumers globally. This will involve developing more alliances with U.S. carriers and building on existing partnerships with Verizon, Cricket Wireless, and AT&T that kicked off last year.

Backers

HMD Global raised $100 million in 2018 from Swiss VC firm Ginko Ventures, DMJ Asia Investment Opportunity, and Wonderful Stars, a subsidiary of FIH Mobile. The high-caliber nature of HMD Global’s latest roster of investors suggests where the Nokia brand could go from here. And as Google reels from the U.S. embargo preventing Huawei from using its mobile apps and services, the company has a vested interest in pushing another phone maker up the ranks.

As a European company, and the only remaining smartphone player on the continent with any meaningful market share, HMD Global is less likely to get caught in the geopolitical crossfire between the U.S. and China. Last year, HMD Global shifted its datacenter from Singapore to Finland, in partnership with Google Cloud, a move that will go some way toward allaying data privacy concerns.

HMD Global’s ambitions stretch beyond the hardware realm. Earlier this year, it launched a new SIM card called HMD Connect that’s focused on roaming, and it snapped up the assets of mobile, enterprise, and cybersecurity software company Valona Labs. At the same time, HMD Global launched a new R&D “center of excellence” to develop software-based services for Nokia devices. This will include building new offerings, such as remote device locking, cybersecurity, enterprise mobility management, and — in the future — imaging and audio technologies.

In short, HMD Global has pretty big ambitions, and with Google and Qualcomm on board, the company is making a bid for serious consideration. Even if it isn’t going to make big gains on the incumbents in North America and Europe, there is still significant market share in play in “key growth markets” like Brazil, India, and parts of Africa.

 

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