Zoom made more money than ever in 2020’s second quarter. At $663.5 million, the videoconferencing platform generated more than four times the revenue it did in the same period last year and it’s raising its projections for the next fiscal year.
The company also added hundreds of thousands of new, major paying users such as ExxonMobil and Activision Blizzard. Zoom says it now hosts about 370,200 customers with more than 10 employees, up by 458% from the second quarter of the previous year.
As more people work from home, businesses are now heavily dependent on remote communication services to stay connected and Zoom has emerged as one of the biggest winners of the shift.
In her opening remarks for the earnings call, CFO Kelly Steckelberg said that nearly 81% of the company’s blockbuster rise was due to subscriptions provided to new customers and the rest from existing customers. In its last quarter as well, Zoom’s revenue grew by 170% to $328 million.
“Our ability to keep people around the world connected, coupled with our strong execution, led to revenue growth of 355% year-over-year in Q2 and enabled us to increase our revenue outlook to approximately $2.37 billion to $2.39 billion for FY21, or 281% to 284% increase year-over-year,” Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in a statement.
But this spurt in traffic has come at a cost for Zoom. Over the last few months, the company’s software has been the center of several reports that criticized its lax security measures. In April, Zoom was also caught publishing misleading encryption claims on its website. Plus, it has suffered multiple widespread outages, the most recent of which took place just a week ago. Zoom’s decision to leave users on the free plan out of the new privacy protections — so that it can help the FBI catch intruders — was not well received either.
In response, Zoom conducted a 90-day security investigation into its systems and announced the ability to enable end-to-end encryption for calls.
“Although the 90-day initiative is over, security and privacy matters will remain an important part of Zoom’s strategy and DNA moving forward as we strive to maintain our customers’ and other stakeholders’ trust,” Yuan added.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.