Following the novel coronavirus pandemic that has forced many countries to announce a lockdown, citizens of the world now explore different apps to stay on top of things at work, keep in touch with friends and family as well as get themselves entertained.
While the spread of this global pandemic is yet to show signs of slowing down, an assortment of apps that offer entertainment and many ways to connect will likely continue to soar in popularity and reap unprecedented commercial dividends.
In fact, a lot of these apps have received a major boost in their ratings and are projecting a massive load of profit in the coming months. eelive.ng presents some of the apps and the astounding attention that this near-global lockdown is bringing to them.
Zoom
Suited for high-quality video calls, Zoom is riding high on a wave of popularity as people are trying to find ways to stay in touch with friends, co-workers and family at a time when social distancing norms are in effect.
The app allows as many as 100 participants to have a conversation at a time, and users can do this for free for 40 minutes at a time. The high number of possible participants might be one of the leading reasons behind Zoom‘s rising acceptability.
While Google Duo, a product of Google, recently announced that it would support up to 12 people, which is still far behind what Zoom offers. WhatsApp, the most popular messaging platform in India, only supports four-person calls.
The sharp increase in remote work saw many in the corporate world turning to Zoom. With the app, meetings can be scheduled, passworded, and recorded; with the extra feature of screen sharing to make data exchange easier and a lot more effective.
The Zoom app’s popularity really shot up during the pandemic. It is currently the top downloaded free offering on the App Store and Play Store. On March 31, Zoom became the most downloaded app in India, surpassing Instagram and TikTok.
According to Appatopia, the international app analysis service, the daily usage of Zoom went up over 300 percent since the lockdown forced people to stay home. Reportedly, Zoom‘s daily active user count was up 378 percent from a year earlier. As of 22 March 2020, while monthly active users were up 186 percent.
The daily active user and monthly active user counts were up by about 340 percent and 160 percent, respectively; which is a clear indicator that the sudden surge has a connection to the COVID-19 outbreak; when you compare it with data from the end of December 2019.
“The isolation period has been quite adventurous,” says Nelson Odili, a 25-year-old brand manager. “And I use the word adventurous because that’s how it feels even though I am not going anywhere. I’ve had time to download and use TikTok. Fun app, really.”
“Netflix sees me for about 40 minutes a day. That is four times what it used to be before the quarantine. I even saw a movie from start to finish without stopping halfway to do something (laughs).”
“The most phenomenal of the apps has been Zoom. We have been having all our work meetings there. And by far it is the best app to. Even with terrible network reception, it still holds stable,” he concluded.
The two Zooms
Yes, Zoom Video Communications has thrived in the age of coronavirus-induced quarantine as it and other remote conferencing services have suddenly become indispensable to the modern economy. Zoom’s shares, which trade as ZM on NASDAQ, have more than doubled since Jan. 1.
But it’s also been great for Zoom Technologies, a Chinese holding company with stakes in video game developers.
Due almost entirely to investor confusion, Zoom Technologies—which trades as an over-the-counter stock with the ticker symbol ZOOM—has also soared, with its share price zooming from $1.10 to an intraday high of $60 last week, before closing at $20.90. (It has returned to earth a bit in the last week, and is now trading around $10)
While the mix-up has been fun for Zoom Technologies investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission was not as amused and suspended trading of its shares yesterday (pdf) until April 8, when presumably investors will know the difference.
According to MacroTrends, a stock research website for apps, Zoom Video Communications has made $623 million, which is an 88% increase from the income it declared in January 2019.
Skype
In the same vein, Skype, another telecommunications application providing video chat, instant messaging and voice calls between computers, tablets, mobile devices, over the Internet is not lagging on this COVID-19 profit train.
On Monday, Microsoft announced that Skype‘s video calling system has surged by 70 percent in a month to 40 million people presently. Microsoft said that Skype-to-Skype calling minutes jumped 220 percent from a month earlier.
Microsoft also announced that Microsoft Teams, it’s Slack competitor, passed 44 million active users, thanks to the pandemic.
Netflix
The global spread of coronavirus has led to lockdown in various cities across the globe, which has affected industrial and economic activity. The shutdowns in major cities across the globe has led to people sitting at home.
Home confinement is likely to lead to higher demand for streaming service apps and home entertainment options. Netflix’s subscriber count is expected to increase in the near term, with more people streaming content.
However, this rise is likely to be dented by strong competition from established players like Amazon and new entrants like Disney+. We believe Netflix’s Q1 and Q2 results will likely confirm the increase in subscribers and revenue.
It is also likely to stick to its 2020 guidance, compared to companies in most of the other sectors which are expected to reduce guidance significantly.
Surge
The online video streaming giant, Netflix has received an influx of ratings, so much so that last month, they had to crash the video quality of their content so as not to overwhelm internet service providers in UK and other parts of Europe.
The leading Video on Demand(Vod) platform with tens of millions of subscribers from 190 countries, is proving to be a lifeline for many of those staying at home.
And one extension of the streaming service which is proving pretty popular of late is Netflix Party – an extension that allows people to watch their favourite movie or TV show with friends and family from the comfort of their own homes.
Rachel Ayodele, a 20-year-old law student, told eelive.ng about using Netflix to wait out the quarantine that: “The Netflix Party live chats are hilarious. Sometimes, me and my friends purposely pick bad movies just so we can make fun of them together.”
Simon Ogaba, a 25-year-old graphics designer, got a Netflix subscription which he describes as “his best purchase. Speaking to eelive.ng, he said, “I got a Netflix account shortly before the lockdown and in just one week, I have upgraded the app to include my family.”
“At first, I thought it was quite expensive. But it’s a steal compared to all the time I would have spent doing nothing but wishing I was outside. And with Nollywood movies now on Netflix, I put my mother on to the app and she loves it.”
“In this trying time, we need all the joy we can get”, Ogaba concluded.
Profits
The company ended 2019 with 167.1 million streaming customers worldwide including 61 million in the U.S. and 106 million internationally. Shares of Netflix dipped in after-hours trading before rebounding into positive territory.
Netflix is yet to declare its revenue for Q1 of 2020. On March 20, 2020, Netflix issued a press release saying that it would declare its financial results on April 21.
For the first quarter of 2020, Netflix projected total paid net adds of 7.0 million. That’s lower than the 7.86 million projected by Wall Street analysts.
However, after almost a 14% rise in Netflix stock since the beginning of this year, at the current price of $375 per share, we believe Netflix stock is likely to remain around the current elevated level considering the positive impact of the ongoing coronavirus crisis on streaming players.
The stock is over 96% higher compared to where it was at the beginning of 2018, a little over 2 years ago.
Check out the stock changes below:
The stock price rise of the last 2 years is justified by the roughly 72% growth seen in Netflix revenues from 2017 to 2019, which was accentuated further by a 234% increase in net income, as net income margin increased from 4.8% in 2017 to 9.3% in 2019.
The rise in earnings per share was marginally lower (compared to net income growth) at 230%, mainly due to a 1.4% increase in shares outstanding.
TikTok
TikTok, the short-form video platform beloved by teens is best known for lip-syncing, dance routines and comedy skits. And as about a third of the world is stuck indoors, TikTokers have come up with more challenges, even carrying them over to Instagram, to make this period less anxiety-ridden.
Among those are the Savage challenge, where users do the viral choreography to the Megan Thee Stallion song of the same name; the “Don’t Rush/Bop Daddy” challenge where users show us before and after glow up transformations etc.
Karina Akosubo, a 17-year-old medical student, said about the app, “I get a lot of anxiety hearing all this bad news and conspiracy theories. But when I go on TikTok and watch people my age doing silly fun stuff at home, it calms me down. I think I might even start doing challenges myself”.
When asked how much time she spends on the app, Akosubo replied, “I don’t know. Hours.”
But it is not all fun and games on TikTok as doctors have now turned to the app to give information about coronavirus prevention.
In one TikTok video viewed more than 416,000 times, a registered nurse named Miki Rai does a choreographed dance involving a lot of hand motions as facts about COVID-19 flash on the screen, such as how long the virus stays on different surfaces.
Here is one of such videos:
@mikiraiofficial Facts about ##coronavirus
♬ original sound - tylan.berryman
In another TikTok video, set to soothing elevator music, Dr. Rose Marie Leslie demonstrates proper handwashing: Wet hands. Lather up. Start washing for 20 seconds. Scrub under your nails and between fingers. Rinse.
With the influx of teens, young adults and healthcare workers, TikTok has been installed by almost 2 billion users globally and is looking at a projected 310% increase in revenue by the fourth quarter of 2020.
TikTok’s revenue gains are impressive in more than percentage terms. The popular social application’s in-app revenue is now at a material scale — topping $50 million according to a chart published by Apptopia’s Adam Blacker.
And while the company’s year-over-year growth is rapid, its sequential gain from a Q3 in-app top-line figure of around $20 million may even be more eye-popping.
According to research from Sensor Tower, TikTok has been installed almost 1.9 billion times across Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store. TikTok was the most popular non-gaming app worldwide in February 2020; ahead of big apps like WhatsApp and Facebook and marking the app’s best month ever.
Overall, the app generated $50.4 million in revenue, with Sensor Tower, a mobile systems enabler, attributing increased spending partly to coronavirus lockdowns all over the world which are forcing millions of citizens to stay indoors.
Houseparty
Houseparty is a social networking service that enables group video chatting through mobile and desktop apps. Users receive a notification when friends are online and available to group video chat. On average, users spend approximately 51 minutes a day on the app in a group or one-on-one chats.
Launched in the second half of 2016, Houseparty was made by the same team behind Meerkat, the live-streaming app which was famous for a few months in 2015 but then lost to its competitor Periscope. After Meerkat was shut down, the developers shifted their focus to Houseparty.
It began with a new twist on the group video call idea. Instead of hitting the call button and manually connecting everyone, Houseparty allows you to just drop into a video chatroom as long as your friends are online. That makes it a lot more casual.
It is one of the apps that you keep open in the background, with friends dropping in and out. In times of social distancing and self-isolation, when we’re seeing much less of our favourite people; Houseparty can make things feel less lonely.
Stephanie Adeniyi, a 26-year-old in a long-distance relationship said, “It’s a lot better than WhatsApp video calls in terms of quality and the extra features. I actually feel a lot less anxious about being in isolation now that it is easier to communicate with my partner.”
“We can spend upwards of an hour together online. Sometimes, we’re talking all through; other times, we just enjoy the silence while being able to see each other.”
In-house games
Houseparty goes further than other group video call apps by offering integrated games — it’s the button with the two dice — such as trivia, quick draw (like Pictionary), Chips and Guac (word association), and Heads Up! (charades).
Among trivia, you can choose from a variety of topics, be it superheroes, song lyrics, geography or sports among others. While most games are free, Heads Up! requires you to pay for most decks (read: topics).
In fact, all other games were paid as well until last year, when Epic Games, the gaming giant behind the uber-popular battle royale game Fortnite, acquired Houseparty.
Because it’s making billions elsewhere, Epic made the games free. It also chose to keep the app independent, meaning the two wouldn’t share user data, though it naturally has made use of Houseparty’s tech to boost Fortnite’s social features.
Vivie Ekpagha, a 23-year-old financial analyst currently working from home, said about the app; “I have found myself reconnecting with friends I knew in university. I love the games because they can be an ice breaker if things are awkward after not talking for so long”.
Williams Dayo, a 22-year-old web developer shared the same sentiment. According to him, he spends “no less than three hours on the app every day. You get to catch up with your friends and have fun; you almost feel like they are actually present in the room with you”.
Houseparty’s downloads have gone soaring during this period. The app saw its daily downloads rise from 24,795 per day on 15 February to 651,694 on 25 March. The service lets up to eight people chat simultaneously, while also offering games and other interactive features.
Summary
There are overwhelming sentiments that the lockdown serially adapted by leaders across the world to curtail coronavirus takes hundreds of millions of people away from their daily activities.
This would predictably precipitate boredom and a variety of negative mental dispositions in the people across the world.
However, these apps have provided appreciable diversions, with which people maintain their sanity and stability. But in doing that, proprietors of these apps are also smiling to the banks!
