Zoom has had a rollercoaster ride since the pandemic sent it viral, posting 369 per cent growth in the March 2020 quarter, before plummeting to ‘just’ 8 per cent year-on-year growth for the most recent quarter.
With A$8.46 billion cash on hand, and the need to expand its once-captive user base into full-time customers, Zoom has announced plans to add email and calendar software into its fast-ballooning offering.
“We are going to announce the beta of a Zoom email and calendar clients,” Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan said at the company’s Zoomtopia customer conference.
“Essentially, any user can download a new client to use our email and calendar.”
Zoom will allow users to simply plug in their existing email into the Zoom ecosystem, or to host email/calendar services entirely through Zoom – the latter of which will allow end-to-end encryption and a customised domain name.
“On the server side it could still be a Google or Microsoft integration for existing Google and Microsoft customers,” Yuan explained. This service will be free
If users wish for Zoom to manage both the client and server side, it will be rolled into the Zoom One Pro or higher subscription plans – but at no additional cost.
The company will also roll out Zoom Spots, which is “essentially a persistent video where you can look around, see who’s there and you can join these conversations and you don’t have to schedule meetings,” Yuan said.
“And it’s a pretty interesting concept to support hybrid work.”
Zoom will also introduce a customer service chat bot, and a virtual sales coach.