The whole world is fighting the coronavirus pandemic and the outbreak has impacted many. As many places in the world are under lockdown, people are working from home and resorting to apps and tools to stay in touch with colleagues, attend virtual meetings, and more. While video conferencing apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, etc are already popular among users, the impact of coronavirus has witnessed a surge in downloads of these apps and the report indicates a record growth in demand.
According to the report, business apps crossed 62 million downloads during March 14-21 across Google Play Store and App Store and is 45% up from the week before March 14th. Furthermore, apps like Zoom Cloud Meetings witness a surge in downloads in the UK, US, and Europe and during the week of March 15-21 in the US, it was downloaded 14 times more than the weekly average during Q4 2019, 22 times more in France, 20 times more in the UK, 17 times more in Germany, 27 times more in Spain and 55 times more in Italy.
Similarly, Microsoft Teams during the week of March 15-21 saw a surge in downloads at 13x in the UK, 11x in the US, 16x in France, and 11x in Germany. Google Hangouts Meet, on the other hand, saw strong growth in weekly downloads at 30x in the US, 24x in the UK, 64x in Spain, and 140x in Italy.
Alongside business apps, social networking video conferencing apps like Houseparty saw strong growth in downloads in Europe. These apps are helping people balance their personal and work life seamlessly in this situation.
In related news, over-the-top (OTT) providers are gradually restricting the streaming quality to Standard definition and YouTube has already started limiting the playback quality to Standard Definition (480p) as a maximum when streaming on mobile (both 4G and Wi-Fi) in India temporarily to manage the server load during the lockdown period.