Displaying items by tag: Zoom

Zoom shares soared after the video-meeting service reported that quarterly revenue rocketed as its ranks of users more than quadrupled.

Revenues leaped 355% to $663.5m for the three months ending 31 July, beating analysts' expectations of $500.5m.

Profits soared to $186m, while customer growth rose 458%, compared with the same period in 2019.

Video conferencing apps remain crucial due to the increase in remote working.

Zoom's shares hit a record high, closing at $325.10, as the firm raised its annual revenue forecast by more than 30% to the range of $2.37bn-$2.39bn, from its previous projection of $1.78bn-$1.80bn.

Key to Zoom's success was its ability to add paying customers - high-budget corporate clients - as opposed to those who use its services for free.

"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," founder and chief executive Eric Yuan said in an earnings release.

Zoom shares were up more than 22 percent in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings, which beat market expectations.

The company reported that it ended the quarter with approximately 370,000 customers that had more than 10 employees, more than four times as many than it had in the same period a year earlier.

The increase in customers built on a surge in the previous fiscal quarter, and appeared to offset investor concerns that Zoom's popularity would decline when restrictions on movements ease and people can get back to seeing one another in person.

The earnings come with Zoom still under pressure to deal with security and privacy. It has taken heat over uninvited cyber guests disrupting online meetings with a tactic called "zoombombing."

Zoom was originally built for businesses with dedicated IT teams to handle implementing security features, but first-time users flocked to the service to work or socialize from home due to the pandemic.

Yuan said on a previous earnings video call with analysts that Zoom "learned a hard lesson" that it should have provided more tech support.

"We should have played the role of IT for first-time users. We learned a hard lesson; this was a mistake I made." As a result, the company has poured resources into privacy and security.

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. announced general availability of its Zoom Phone cloud phone service in 25 additional countries and territories, as well as a new, drastically simplified telephone service plan for companies with locations across the globe. Zoom now provides local telephone service and domestic calling in over 40 countries and territories around the world.

The new countries and territories where Zoom Phone supports local phone numbers are: Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Mexico, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

This expanded geographic coverage allows Zoom customers to migrate away from their legacy phone systems and consolidate business communications into Zoom’s video-first unified communications platform. To help customers streamline their communication carrier portfolio, Zoom has launched the Global Select plan. With this new plan, a company can purchase domestic calling in 40 plus countries and territories where Zoom provides PSTN service, for a single price.

While many companies with locations around the world are responsible for negotiating telephone service agreements with various carriers, Zoom aims to simplify that process. In addition to local service in 40 plus countries and territories, Zoom Phone provides telephone connectivity covering the world through its Bring Your Own Carrier model, including in markets where telephone service is highly regulated. Zoom will also continue to provide an easy solution for companies that do not require individual direct numbers for every employee. For these customers, the Zoom Phone Pro plan for cloud telephony service is available starting at $8 USD a user per month. “Zoom Phone is changing the game,” said Elka Popova, VP of Connected Work Research at Frost & Sullivan. “Now, with an innovative plan model and availability of its successful Zoom Phone product in 40 plus countries, it will be a compelling option for many multinational customers.”

“As we engage with our customers, they are telling us they want to untangle their global telephony spending and consolidate, much like their move to the cloud,” said Graeme Geddes, Head of Zoom Phone. “In response we developed the Global Select plan and our expansion across the globe.” What Zoom Phone customers are saying: "At ServiceNow, we rely on Zoom daily to keep our global teams, customers, and prospects connected,” said Tomer Mekhty, Vice President of Global IT Operations, ServiceNow. “We’ve been long-time Zoom platform users and we are excited to have the opportunity to add Zoom Phone to Zoom’s full stack of communication and collaboration tools. Zoom Phone enhances our stack of communication and collaboration, covering voice, video, and chat all in one. It makes it possible to transition from voice to video calls seamlessly and achieve an approach to communication that best suits our collaborative and innovative culture.”

“At Cision, our entire team has found Zoom Phone easy to use and very reliable even when network conditions are challenging for our remote workforce,” said Eric Rabuse, Head of Telephony at Cision. “It offers voicemail transcriptions, three-way calling, a centralized portal for managing all voice operations securely, and many other features that our teams enjoy. The intuitive call queues are easy for users to manage and empowers our teams to make adjustments to their call handling without IT assistance. Zoom’s constant innovation across the entire platform puts a smile on our faces as they frequently surprise us with new features and releases. Just when you thought phones were old school, Zoom made them so much cooler with direct integrations into their meetings platform and CRMs we use daily.”

“I am a long-term Farmers Agency owner. Early on, I recognized the potential of cloud phone systems and have used several vendors over the years,” said Kevin Carda, Farmers Insurance Agency Owner. “There was always an issue: frequent inconsistent call quality issues, complex interfaces, modem/router issues, and so forth. Being a recent Zoom platform user, I discovered that they have a cloud phone service and it is superb! I was easily guided through the setup process and they helped me design a call management process that best suited my business. They truly have the perfect solution with voice, video, and chat services in a single intuitive interface and a very responsive support team to help you. I am thrilled with Zoom’s suite of products and their support team, and highly recommend Zoom to anyone looking for cutting-edge communication services at a very reasonable price."

Instead of going with cloud giants Amazon or Microsoft, Zoom announced it had picked Oracle as a cloud infrastructure partner to support its rapid growth and evolving business needs as the enterprise video communications company continues to innovate and provide an essential service to its extensive customer base.

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic which has struck the entire world, forcing it into a great global lockdown, social distancing has become key to our survival.

This has caused an enormous growth in meeting apps such as Google Hangouts and especially Zoom.

Zoom has gained a lot of traction over the past few weeks, especially in the UAE, as the government eased restrictions on various VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) platforms such as Skype for Business and Google Hangouts and made Zoom available to the public.

One of Zoom’s key features is that it could host calls with up to 100 participants which has been the go-to for consumers all over the world in times of social distancing.

While WhatsApp is one of the most prominent messaging apps in the world, it now faces fierce competition since Zoom has taken the market by storm with its unique features. Due to this, it has been speculated that WhatsApp plans to introduce a new feature which will essentially enable group calls which would exceed the current limit of 4 users per call.

A report by WABetaInfo, a fan website which tracks WhatsApp’s latest updates, revealed, “WhatsApp, probably due to the concerns for the COVID-19 and the fact that more users are using group calls, has decided to extend that limit to allow calls with more participants.”

Adding that, “All participants will have to be on the most recent WhatsApp version for iOS and Android to be able to participate in a bigger group call.”

Zoom has very quickly become a key player in the VoIP market as of late. Apple’s FaceTime can support up to 32 people in a group call whilst Facebook Messenger can support a maximum of 50 people; this places Zoom at the forefront.