Hundreds of millions of people across the world use video calls to stay connected. You may think it’s a relatively recent invention, but it isn’t. In reality, it’s been around for decades. It just wasn’t always exceptionally affordable or convenient to use.
Now, it is, and there’s lots of software to choose from.
Read through our collection of video conferencing statistics to find out how the most popular platforms are doing and how we expect them to perform in the future.
Voluminous Video Conferencing Stats (Editor’s Choice):
- Skype had 40 million daily users at the peak of the pandemic.
- Zoom boasts 300 million daily meeting participants.
- Teams has around 75 million daily users.
- The average company uses four paid video conferencing apps.
- In October 2021, Microsoft Teams surpassed Zoom as the leading corporate video conferencing platform.
- Zoom’s market valuation has dropped 82.4% from its peak.
- Google Meet and Cisco Webex became interoperable in late 2021.
- In January 2022, Microsoft Teams had 270 million monthly active users.
- Zoom reported annual revenue of $4.1 billion in 2021.
What Is Video Conferencing?
Let’s be honest: if you’re on this page, you most probably know what video conferencing is.
It’s when you waste half an hour trying to connect to an online meeting only to realize there’s a problem with your microphone or camera—or both.
Yeah, it’s not just you.
1. The 1992 CU-SeeMe was the first video conferencing app.
(Source: TechTarget)
The history of video conferencing began in the early 20th century when AT&T and Bell Labs came up with various devices capable of transmitting not only audio but video, too.
It wasn’t until 1992 that a student from Cornell University developed the CU-SeeMe application for Macintosh OS. It was the first desktop program to support video conferencing.
In 1994, it was released on Windows, too.
2. Video conferencing used to cost $1,000 per hour.
(Source: TechTarget)
There’s no doubt free video conferencing is immensely widespread in the post-pandemic world. FaceTime is free for anyone with an iPhone, Zoom is free for the first 40 minutes (and then you can just call again), and there are also Skype, Facebook Messenger, and a bunch of other apps.
However, video calls weren’t always this affordable. Just a few decades ago, Compression Labs released CLI T1, a commercial group video conferencing system. Not only was it enormous (it took up a whole room), but it also cost a quarter of a million dollars to install.
Worst of all, the price of a call was $1,000 per hour. That’s nearly $17 per minute!
3. You need around 3 Mbps for smooth video conferencing.
(Source: Zoom)
Modern video conferencing software is quite more sophisticated than four decades ago, so you don’t need to invest your life savings to run it. You do need a decent internet connection, though.
Zoom, for instance, requires 3-4 Mbps for smooth video calls in 1080p, depending on the number of meeting attendees.
In other words, unless you live in a remote place, far from civilization, your chances of meeting the minimum internet speed for video conferencing are good.
If you’re using cable internet, 4G, or 5G, you should be fine. If you’re out in the woods and only have 3G, that’s when you may struggle.
Fun fact: 82% of all consumer internet traffic is actually people watching videos—YouTube, Tiktok, streaming, you name it. All in all, each of us generates an average of 49.8 GB of IP traffic every month.
4. 86% of businesses conducted virtual interviews during the pandemic.
(Source: Gartner)
At the start of the pandemic, external hiring of new employees fell by 82%. Those who continued to seek new additions did so in non-traditional ways.
Nowadays, a person uses video conferencing software for multiple purposes—to catch up with a friend, take an online class, attend a party, have a work-related meeting, or even find a job.
In fact, about 86% of companies did some (or all) of their hiring through video calls during the pandemic, and 85% continued to use video conferencing for onboarding their new employees.
Video Conferencing Market Share in 2022
The market isn’t doing too great at the moment—at least in terms of stock prices. Otherwise, it’s perfectly fine.
As a matter of fact, we expect it to keep growing in the foreseeable future.
5. Zoom’s market valuation has dropped 82.4%.
(Source: Bloomberg)
Many tech companies whose market capitalization burgeoned during the pandemic have lost much of their value. One of those who were hit the hardest is Zoom.
At one point in 2020, the web conferencing platform boasted a valuation of $158.99 billion. Now, it’s more than 80% down from its peak, with its market cap falling to a measly $30 billion.
Don’t get us wrong—that’s still higher than pre-pandemic levels (when Zoom hovered around $20-$25 billion), but it’s a far cry from the 2020-2021 highs.
6. In October 2021, Microsoft Teams surpassed Zoom as the leading corporate video conferencing platform.
(Source: Bloomberg)
Although Zoom is still very much the dominant video-calling platform among casual users worldwide, that’s not necessarily the case in the corporate world.
Microsoft Teams’ market share (in terms of revenue among business customers) has gone up to about 30%, slightly surpassing Zoom. The latter’s rise has been mainly at the cost of Webex’s decline, which has plummeted from 24% to 13% since 2019.
Fun fact: Although people in 41 countries prefer Teams, Zoom wins the battle, being the favorite video conferencing solution in 44 nations.
7. Analysts expect Zoom to rebound by 65%.
(Source: Bloomberg)
Even as Zoom’s market share remains dominant, its share prices dropped from $568.34 in 2020 to just $89.74 in May 2022.
That said, analysts predicted they’d rebound by up to 65% over the 12 months that follow—and it appears that they may have been right. It’s been just over two months since, and Zoom is already trading at around $110 at the time of writing.
It remains to be seen whether it’ll reach the $143.30 forecast by the end of this year or the beginning of the next.
Video Conferencing Companies
As is usual in the tech field, there are a few prominent companies that dominate the video conferencing sphere.
Here, we’ll look at how many users each of them has attracted—and how much they make.
8. Zoom reported $4.1 billion in revenue in 2021.
(Source: Bloomberg)
The video conferencing market size expanded rapidly starting in 2020, which led to increased revenues for the main players in the field.
In the first year of lockdowns, Zoom generated $2.65 billion—a fourfold boost compared to 2019. In 2021, the video call giant enjoyed a further 58% rise, reaching an annual revenue of $4.1 billion.
Fun fact: Zoom’s stock price went from $559 in October 2020 to just $182 by the end of 2021.
9. In 2020, Zoom boasted 300 million daily meeting participants.
(Source: The Verge)
Zoom usage statistics reveal that the platform had 300 million daily meeting participants at one point in time. Back in 2019, this figure barely reached 10 million.
However, it’s important to note that participants don't equal users, as one person can join multiple meetings in a single day. Therefore, we don’t know how many individual users Zoom has.
10. Teams reached 200 million daily meeting participants.
(Source: The Verge)
Video conferencing statistics concerning Zoom’s rivals suggest that some of them aren’t too far behind. Teams initially announced that it had 75 million daily active users but later started using the same metric as Zoom—meeting participants—in a bid to indicate that it measures up to its competitor quite well.
Furthermore, Microsoft revealed in January 2022 that Teams had 270 million monthly active users, though the tech giant provided no further updates to the other figures.
11. Google Meet has 100 million daily meeting participants.
(Source: Forbes)
Google Meet’s market share doesn’t quite compare to that of other leading platforms, but it’s not insignificant. In 2020, Meet reached 100 million daily meeting participants, which represents a 300% growth compared to pre-pandemic levels.
That said, it’s worth noting that Google has made and discontinued a myriad of similar platforms over the years, including Google+ Messenger, Google Allo, Google Spaces, Google Talks, and Google Voice, some of which were later incorporated into Google Hangouts—until the giant discontinued Hangouts in 2021, too.
12. Cisco Webex added over 800 new features in the first year of the pandemic.
(Source: ZD Net)
Cisco Systems’ Webex was once the go-to software for corporate video calls. However, when the pandemic started, Webex lost market share at an unprecedented rate, dwindling to a shell of its former self.
Admittedly, the solution was lacking in features compared to up-and-coming alternatives—can you believe it didn’t offer virtual backgrounds? That’s a near-must when working from home—so we at Web Tribunal can see why customers gravitated to other platforms.
That said, Webex has done its best to reclaim its share of the market. For instance, it added over 800 new features, vastly improving usability.
13. Skype reached 40 million daily users during the pandemic.
(Source: The Verge)
Skype used to be the premier audio and video calling service a decade ago. It not only had several hundred million users, but it also had no less than eight million paying subscribers.
Alas, more recent video conferencing stats suggest that Skype helps around 40 million people around the world to stay connected with others.
If you compare this figure to the ones above, you’ll see that 40 million users is pretty much equal to “hardly any” subscribers. Even sadder—that’s after the 70% pandemic-induced boost.
Microsoft’s attention has clearly shifted towards Teams now, though the company said it’d keep supporting Skype “for now.” That choice of words makes us think it will eventually pull the plug.
Video Conferencing Trends
A few decades ago, being able to call a friend and not only hear their voice but also see their face was nothing more than a dream.
Today, we take video calls for granted. And yet it wasn’t until COVID-19 struck that video conferencing became truly commonplace.
Even though many have now returned to the office, it’s unlikely that online video calls will lose much popularity—they’re simply too convenient.
Let’s look at the latest trends.
14. Zoom has already generated $2.19 billion in revenue in the first half of 2022.
(Source: Bloomberg)
Zoom’s Q1 2022 quarterly report revealed that the company’s breakneck growth has finally subsided. Revenues still rose year on year but just by 12%, reaching $1.07 billion.
In Q2, they stood at $1.12 billion.
Even though Zoom is still the leading platform, it appears that the video conferencing industry as a whole has mostly reached its limits for the time being. Regardless, Zoom is on track to make $4.4 billion in 2022, which means it could end the year with a 7% increase in annual revenue.
Fun fact: The video conferencing market will keep growing at a CAGR of over 10%, reaching $14.58 billion by 2029. What’s behind this boost? Well, a bit of everything, really. From the cloud and AI all the way to the increasing popularity of e-learning platforms like Thinkific or AmazingTalker.
15. Google Meet and Cisco Webex became interoperable in late 2021.
(Source: Bloomberg)
There are several major video conferencing platforms at the moment, and they most certainly are competitors. But two of them decided late last year to cooperate instead of fight. Google Meet and Cisco Webex are now interoperable, meaning you can use either platform on either company’s hardware.
You can join Google meetings from Cisco devices and Webex meetings from Google devices such as the Chromebase and Chromebook.
16. 83% of the people who use video conferencing in the US do so for up to 12 hours a week.
(Source: Dialpad)
The time spent in meetings isn’t the same for everyone. For starters, 37% of US employees have never done a video call at work.
Of those who have, though, nearly half spend just under four hours a week in meetings, and more than a third of them invest 4-12 hours in online conferences.
However, the most shocking group is the 4.73% who video conference for 20 hours or more every week. That’s half their workload!
All in all, the average office employee spends 31 hours a month attending meetings in one format or another.
17. The majority of US employees (82.9%) believe that audio meetings are good enough.
(Source: Dialpad)
The future of video conferencing looks bright—78% of big companies say they use video calling software, and more (up to 83%) are planning on it, too. As it is, the average enterprise uses not one, but four paid video conferencing apps.
Yet a survey found that 82.9% of US employees see no reason why every meeting should be a virtual video call by default. Moreover, 44.94% argued that any session that doesn’t include presentations nor require screen sharing should be an audio call instead.
And we see their point—the majority of participants don’t even turn their cameras on during meetings anyway.
Be that as it may, it seems that the visual aspect of meetings is seemingly here to stay. Some video conferencing services have begun integrating AR and VR features to boost further the appeal of virtual conferencing as a replacement for physical meetings.
Wrap Up
Video calling has come a long way in just a few years, not in small part because of the coronavirus. And while the recent tech-stock sell-off no doubt worries many of the companies behind popular web conferencing solutions, it should ultimately matter little to us.
After all, if there’s one key takeaway from all these video conferencing statistics, it’s that most companies use more than one platform. Losing one or two will hardly be fatal—plus, we’re sure more will crop up right away, hopefully having learned from their predecessors’ mistakes.
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A wayfarer by heart, Jordan fancies journeying into foreign lands with a camera in hand almost as much as he enjoys roving the online world. He spends his time poking at letters and pixels, trying to transmogrify them into something cool.
