It’s a question millions of people have been asking every day during lockdown: “Are you free to Zoom later?”
The video conferencing app has achieved every marketers dream, by rapidly entering common parlance just like “I’ll Google it” or “let me get an Uber”.
Even the less technologically savvy have become big users of its intuitive service.
Founded by chief executive Eric Yuan, Zoom has done its name justice and soared in value in a remarkably short space of time. The videoconferencing app has been the big winner from lockdown. Its share price has trebled in value since the start of the year to $210 (£164) and its valuation now stands at $61bn – more than twice that of Twitter.
As Microsoft, Google, and Cisco slugged it out for control of the same market with more expensive and cumbersome products of their own – Zoom came from nowhere to covertly scale up its offering without alerting rivals.
“I think Zoom is on the track of becoming the Google of videoconferencing,” says, David Madden, an analyst at CMC Markets.
“The way technologies seem to go is there is one player that completely crushes it, as Google did with search engines. In my view it’s Zoom’s crown to lose.”
Zoom joined Netflix in making a mockery of analyst expectations, which were themselves intensely optimistic about their ability to grow market share during lockdown.
Revenue for the three months to the end of April climbed to $328.2m, a 169pc increase on the same period last year. Crucially, much of that revenue growth was driven by a surge in big paying customers.
Zoom now has 769 customers paying more than $100,000 in “trailing annual revenue”, which was up 90pc year on year. User numbers have surged from 10 million at the start of the year, with the app now hosting 300 million daily meeting participants.
Business customers with more than 10 employees surged 354pc to 265,400 during the quarter. Add to that the fact that the company is sitting on cash or “cash equivalents” of $1.1bn and it becomes clear that Zoom has moved fast to shore up its growth.