This article analyses video in general and Zoom in particular from a technological point of view. It says that video will be present evermore and asks “Will it still be Zoom, though?” After you read the article I’d like to discuss it from an investment point of view…
What comes after Zoom?
We had video calls in science fiction, and we had video conferencing in the 1990s, just as the web was taking off, as a very expensive and impractical tool for big companies. It was proposed as a use case for 3G, which didn’t happen at all, and with the growth of consumer broadband we got all sorts of tools that could do it, but it never really became a mass-market consumer behaviour. Now, suddenly, we’re all locked down, and we’re all on video calls all the time, doing team stand-ups, play dates and family birthday parties, and suddenly Zoom is a big deal. At some point many of those meetings will turn back into coffees, we hope, but video will remain.
Will it still be Zoom, though?
https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2020/6/22/zoom-and-t…
Welcome back! I hope you had a nice read.
I found it a good and well written article. I could take issue with some of points it makes but then we would get lost in a mass of trivia. As investors what concerns us is not “Will it still be Zoom?” but “Is Zoom a good investment now?”
Technology tends to become commoditized over time and video-conferencing will not be the exception. If you have followed my sigmoid or “S” curve posts then you’ll know that the two points of interest for investors are the bottom and the top curves of the technology’s “S” curve. The bottom curve marks the market’s acceptance and adoption of the technology (at around 15% market penetration) and the top curve, the market’s saturation (at around 85% market penetration). As investors we want to be long in between those two points, not too soon, not too late.
I believe that video-conferencing is well past the chasm so it’s time to be LONG, but a long time before market saturation so just enjoy the ride.
Denny Schlesinger