April 6, 2020 / Taylor Leamey

According to Apptopia, Zoom had one of its biggest days ever on March 22, with nearly 600,000 app downloads.

Zoom is valued more than each of the three biggest airlines in the U.S.

Since going public in April 2019, Zoom’s shares have gone up 77%.

Zoom added more users in the first two months of 2020 than it did in the entirety of 2019.

As the need to teleconference has skyrocketed in response to the coronavirus, Zoom has broken through its previously limiting barriers and is leading the charge in staying connected while social distancing. Already surpassing its 2019 performance, Zoom is now being widely used for education, telehealth and has even spread into the personal space through weddings and zoom parties.

Before the stay-at-home orders started to roll in, Zoom, Skype and Google Hangouts averaged around the same for downloads. But at the beginning of March, downloads for Zoom exploded. Skype and Google Hangouts have also seen an increase in downloads as a result of the coronavirus, but not anywhere near the growth Zoom has seen. The difference? Zoom is easy to use and tends to not freeze as much as Skype, and it’s a standalone platform that doesn’t require a subscription to the Google suite like Google Hangouts.

Zoom’s response to COVID-19

In an effort to make sure its users are getting the best experience in their current situations, Zoom has made some modifications to its plans and features. To provide extra resources to students, Zoom has lifted the 40-minute meeting limit for K-12 free basic accounts for countries all around the world. The webinars, live training, multi-language resources and recording options have also been expanded.

However, that rapid expansion has come with some with some stumbles. The company has come under fire for privacy concerns, including people “Zoombombing” by joining meetings that weren’t meant for them. Users can protect against this practice by requiring passwords to join their meetings, although it is not enabled by default.

To make sure students’ lessons are secure, Zoom has made the Waiting Room feature a default setting for all school accounts. A security feature, the waiting room allows teachers and instructors to control who is entering their virtual classrooms. Teachers are able to grant access to individual students or everyone in the waiting room. This feature is also used for hosting telehealth appointments and interviews.

The sudden decline of the travel industry

While Zoom has been able to capitalize on our need to stay connected to work and family, other industries have not been so lucky. Industries like travel are experiencing plummeting market capitalization.

Airlines have been hit particularly hard: As of April 3, Hilton is valued at around $16 billion, which is a drop from $31 billion in January. American Airlines dropped to about $4 billion and Expedia is down to around $7 billion, while Zoom nearly doubled in value to approximately $36 billion.

The impacts of the COVID-19 on some of the top industries in the world doesn’t reflect that they were somehow unable to adapt. Government-imposed restrictions on travel have resulted in the unheard-of drop in global air traffic. According to Flightradar24, commercial air traffic has dropped by 41% in the last two weeks of March.

Data from macrotrends.net

With estimated losses of at least $24 billion in foreign spending and 825,000 jobs eliminated, airlines have experienced one of the hardest hits by coronavirus. In fact, the Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation suggests that, without proper government intervention, nearly 800 airlines could go out of business by the end of May. The pandemic is impacting all levels of travel, from airlines to hotels to travel agencies.

The airline industry’s response

The decrease in travel has left planes empty and unused, meaning airlines are losing considerable money with each flight. In an effort to save money and meet the requirements of the $58 billion bailout, airlines are working towards temporarily modifying service routes.

Instead of flying multiple flights to the same locations with empty seats, airlines are considering consolidating passengers onto one flight, though still selling tickets independently through the different airlines. This consolidation plan would have to be approved by the Trump administration, and airlines would need to come to agreements on things like costs and scheduling for it to work.

Why does it matter?

Comparing Zoom’s trajectory against the airline industry’s demonstrates the different effects pandemics have across industries. Some, like airlines, suffer as people are restricted from travel. Others, like video conferencing, benefit because they give us what we need in the moment: the ability to stay connected in a moment of crisis.