Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Zoom, the video conferencing platform, was the darling of the epidemic, but now it has declined because of the epidemic.

In the "post-epidemic" era, Zoom needs to prove that it has more role in the office in the face of the attack of Google and Microsoft.

Zoom announced 15% layoffs, involving about 1300 people. Zoom has tripled its workforce in the past two years. As for the job cuts, Zoom CEO Yuan Zheng (Eric Yuan) said: "We haven't spent enough time in analyzing the team and assessing whether we are making sustainable progress towards our highest priorities."

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Yuan Zheng also said he was responsible for these mistakes. He cut his salary by 98%, gave up his 2023 bonus and reduced his salary to about $10, 000.

This situation is not limited to Zoom. At the beginning of the epidemic, online business became popular, and many technology companies that ate this wave of dividends grew rapidly and increased hiring. In 2020, Amazon added more than 400,000 employees, and Meta hired more than 13000.

On the other hand, Zoom has become famous all over the world and has become the first choice for many Americans to hold meetings, celebrate birthdays and other group activities. At the end of April 2020, Zoom teleconference was used by 300 million people every day, and it became the most downloaded App on iOS that year. In the fiscal year ended January 2021, Zoom's revenue was $2.6 billion, up 326% from a year earlier.

After nearly three years of prosperity and decline, Zoom is no longer what it used to be. Strong competitors such as Microsoft and Slack are starting to attack Zoom by bundling video calls with other productivity tools such as email.

With the market saturated, Zoom growth has slowed. Zoom's growth in corporate users in the first three quarters of the fiscal year was 24%, 18% and 14%, respectively. "the market is suddenly getting tough," said Will McKeon-White, an analyst at Forrester, a research firm.

In the face of the uncertainty of the market, enterprises have sought to cut costs. In the face of the competition with bundled business such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Salesforce's Slack, the small and beautiful Zoom is more difficult to resist.

Zoom is still growing. Revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2023 (as of October 31, 2022) grew by about 5% year-on-year, but grew by 35% in the same period in 2021.

With the revival of offline activities, Zoom's presence in entertainment has become much weaker and more focused on office scenes. Zoom's main competitor, Microsoft Teams, is quietly growing, with more than 270 million monthly users by early 2022. (note: Zoom does not disclose the number of monthly active users, while Guangfa Securities estimated it to be about 800 million in October last year)

Zoom also seems to realize that it can't just do video calling services. Late last year, Zoom announced plans to integrate email and calendar functions, add cartoon avatars and meeting templates, launch AI-powered chatbots to solve customer problems, and new features such as "Zoom Spots" (said to be related to the video collaboration experience) later this year.

Zoom stood out because it was easy to use. But after it became synonymous with video conferencing, the tree began to attract wind. More and more people use video to communicate, staring at their faces for hours a day, resulting in the so-called "video conference fatigue", known as "Zoom fatigue". Later, there is a word called "Zoom bombing", which is used to describe uninvited guests breaking into Zoom online classes or meetings and then making inappropriate remarks or uploading pornographic pictures.

Zoom has also been criticized for failing to protect users' privacy. At its peak in October 2020, Zoom's market capitalization was as high as $139 billion, but now it has fallen to just over $23 billion.

With smaller plates and the size and quality of competitors, Zoom's future looks increasingly blurred. Zoom can no longer hold on to its one-third of an acre, and it needs to prove that it is more than just video calls to gain a foothold in the face of powerful rivals like Google and Microsoft and renew its life in the Zoom era.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.