- Zoom encountered another surge this month in daily users, jumping from 200 million in March to 300 million in the last three weeks.
- The organization also announced that a 1,900 percent rise in weekend calls has been seen as people around the world are forced to stay in their homes and interact remotely with friends and family.
Zoom encountered another surge this month in daily users, jumping from 200 million in March to 300 million in the last three weeks, it said in a blog post on Wednesday. Before the coronavirus outbreak caused millions of people to operate from home, the video conferencing app had only 10 million users in December, but its development has raised scrutiny over its security and privacy concerns.
The figures come from an update by CEO Eric Yuan on his 90-day safety plan. Yuan said the company would avoid adding new features to Zoom last month so it could devote its resources to resolving issues such as “Zoombombing” when uninvited participants join the meeting.
The company said Wednesday its update to Zoom 5 will be available in the next few days. It will include AES 256-bit GCM encryption intrusion-blocking and the ability of account administrators to choose the data center will be redirected via their video call (if they wish to avoid a particular region).
Additionally, you will be able to report abusive users, a feature revealed earlier this week in a PC Mag article. The choice is shown in the new security settings menu of the app.
Zoom Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg said the company is seeing cost increases linked to its rapid user growth.
Zoom is having a moment, with instructors, yogis, religious figures, friends, and, of course, corporate workers taking the app to meet online. “ZOOM Cloud Meetings” tops the free charts in Apple and Google’s U.S. mobile app stores, ahead of giants like Facebook Messenger and Netflix, as well as the popular social app TikTok.
The organization also announced that a 1,900 percent rise in weekend calls has been seen as people around the world are forced to stay in their homes and interact remotely with friends and family.
The numbers compare the week of April 12 with the week of Feb. 23, before the coronavirus epidemic was deemed a pandemic by the World Health Organization and before much of the world went into lockdown. These also indicate an increase of 500 percent in lunchtime meetings and an increase of 700 percent in calls on weekdays between 5 and 9 p.m.
Steckelberg gave no new guidance and then drew attention to the company’s March 4 earnings release. Steckelberg then said that Zoom expects gross margins to be at the low end of its long-term target of 80 percent to 82 percent in the 2021 fiscal year.
