Zoom corrects user numbers

Zoom has corrected its own figures on the number of users of the service. An announcement last week talked about the number of daily users, but it turns out to be the number of daily video call participants.

Last week’s blog post now states that there are 300 million video call participants, up from 300 million daily users last week. A user can join multiple calls in one day and Zoom will count them as multiple video call participants.

The correction makes it clearer that the number of users of video calling services is not always easy to compare. Other services often report the number of daily users, but Zoom does not, even after the correction. Some services report both. For example, Microsoft Teams has 75 million daily users and 200 million daily video call participants. Google Meet has 100 million daily participants. No data is available for other competitors such as Cisco Webex.

Zoom claims to The Verge that it is a “genuine mistake”. Previous figures also included daily participants in video calls, making Zoom’s figures comparable to before the coronavirus outbreak. Zoom had 10 million daily call participants in December, 200 million in March.