Zoom is a video conferencing app, geared towards business usage. It was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, and launched in January 2013.
While gathering considerable popularity and coming to run profitably in the following years, Zoom truly entered the public consciousness during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. It was to Zoom that users across the world turned to stay in touch during the lockdown effected to stop the spread of the virus.
Prior to founding Zoom, Yuan had helped to build WebEx, in the decade prior to its acquisition by Cisco in 2007. Yuan, originally from China, famously emigrated to the US after repeatedly failing to get a visa (ninth time lucky!)
Many advised Yuan against entering an already crowded space, in which he would be competing with Microsoft (Skype) and Google as well as his former employer. He was confident, however, that he could develop a product more enjoyable to use than the incumbents.
Yuan’s confidence paid off, with a million Zoom users logged within a few months (May 2013), 10 million Zoom users a year later (June 2014), and 40 million around two years post-launch (February 2015).
It was in 2020, as we mention above, however, that Zoom really took off. With people confined to their homes, apps that allowed us to stay in touch became central to our day-to-day lives. People in their droves chose Zoom over other options. Ease of access and careful work to keep latency below 150 milliseconds (the maximum before conversations start to feel unnatural) have been cited as potential reasons for the app’s success.
Yuan stated in a blog post that over the course of May 2020, Zoom was seeing 200 million daily meeting participants. The following month, this figure had risen to 300 million. This compares to 10 million in December 2019. Zoom still remains a very popular service, but as most of the world has returned to some form of office work, it has lost a bit of its shine.
To fix that, Zoom is aiming to expand the amount of services it can offer to businesses. It acquired Solvvy in May 2022, which sells conversational AI and automation packages to customer support centres.
We have collected data and statistics on Zoom. Read on below to find out more.
Zoom Key Statistics
- Zoom generated $4.5 billion revenue in 2023, an 2.9% increase year-on-year
- Zoom reported $637 million net income in 2023
- It had 220,000 enterprise customers in 2023
- Zoom was one of the fastest growing apps of the pandemic; meeting participants increased by 2900%
- Zoom’s valuation exceeded $100 billion during the pandemic, a 383% increase on its value in January 2020
Zoom Overview
| Title 1 | Title 2 |
|---|---|
| Launch date | 15 January 2013 |
| HQ | San Jose, California |
| People | Eric Yuan (founder, CEO) |
| Company type | Public (NASDAQ: ZM) |
| Industry | Video communications |
Zoom Revenue
Zoom rapidly increased its revenue in 2020, but has not kept the same growth in 2021 and 2022.
Zoom quarterly revenue 2018 to 2022 ($mm)
Zoom annual revenue 2018 to 2022 ($bn)
| Year | Revenue ($bn) |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 0.33 |
| 2019 | 0.62 |
| 2020 | 2.6 |
| 2021 | 4.09 |
| 2022 | 4.39 |
| 2023 | 4.52 |
Source: Company data
Zoom Profit
Zoom has been profitable for five years, but its profitability margin declined in 2022.
Zoom annual net income 2018 to 2022 ($mm)
| Year | Profit ($mm) |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 7 |
| 2019 | 21 |
| 2020 | 671 |
| 2021 | 1060 |
| 2022 | 104 |
| 2023 | 637 |
Source: Company data
Zoom Business Customers
Zoom had over 200,000 business customers in 2022, an increase on 2021 figures. Zoom changed its terminology of business customers to only include enterprises with more than 10 employees in 2021.
Zoom annual business customers 2019 to 2022
| Year | Business customers |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 82,400 |
| 2020 | 470,100 |
| 2021 | 191,000 |
| 2022 | 213,000 |
| 2023 | 220,400 |
Source: Company data
Zoom Daily Meeting Participants
During the pandemic, Zoom published data on how many daily meeting participants it had. This reached 350 million in December 2020, and hasn’t been updated since.
Zoom daily meeting participants 2019 to 2020 (mm)
| Date | Daily meeting participants (mm) |
|---|---|
| March 2019 | 10 |
| March 2020 | 200 |
| April 2020 | 300 |
| December 2020 | 350 |
Note: Daily meeting participants can be counted more than once. Source: Zoom, Recode
Zoom FAQ
How many times was Zoom downloaded in Q2 2020?
Zoom joined a small list of apps, which includes TikTok and Pokemon Go, that have been downloaded over 300 million times in a single quarter (Sensor Tower)
How many schools use Zoom?
Over 90,000 schools used Zoom at the height of the pandemic
How many times was the Zoom mobile app downloaded in 2020?
Zoom was downloaded 485 million times in 2020
How many webinars are hosted on Zoom?
In 2020, over 45 billion minutes of webinars were hosted on the platform
