Which video calling platform you use the most for a group calling?
When the entire world got thrown into the jaws of the COVID-19 pandemic, group video calling, or call it video conferencing, came to the rescue to help us survive the social distancing. One could also say that it almost became an extension of our human selves as well.
So, now the question arrives, amid the many freely accessible applications and platforms, which one of them succeeded in winning us over?
Well, to answer that question LocalCircles, which is a community-led social media engagement platform, conducted a survey. In that, they sought to find which messaging app emerged as the top choice for Indians to make video calls. Guess what? The answer might not really surprise you – it’s WhatsApp!
Yes, the Facebook-owned instant messaging platform has been the go-to platform for most Indians to connect with their loved ones and work colleagues while they were in lockdown.
Currently, WhatsApp has over 400 million users in India – the country which happens to be the biggest country by the number of users.
A whopping 35% respondents selected WhatsApp as their prefered video calling platform, followed by Zoom which is opted by 27% respondents in India.
Rest, 13% respondents said they liked Google Meet/Hangout, 11% said they used Microsoft Teams, 5% preferred Skype, another 5% replied with other apps. Surprisingly, despite all the actions and buzz that took place recently, JioMeet came in at last with only 4% respondents preferring it.
The most shocking revelation here is that – Zoom, even though being widely criticised over privacy issues extensively, was able to retain its stronghold on Indian consumers.
Only 15% of the survey respondents expressed their desire to switch from Zoom to the JioMeet platform which was trolled heavily for allegedly plagiarising the prior one. Close to 20% of respondents said that they don’t trust the Ambani-backed video conferencing tool yet.
Also, here it needs to be noted that, even though very less number of respondents wanted to switch from Zoom, privacy is a concern which was observed to remain key as 70% of respondents expressed that they wanted their video calls data to be stored within the country itself.
WhatsApp, the dominant mobile messaging app, launched ‘Messenger Rooms’ quite recently to counter the increasing popularity of Zoom and other video calling platforms. The feature allows up to 50 people to hop onto a video call with no time limits at all and clearly, as per the survey results, this cross-platform functionality has helped them stay afoot by a long shot.
Apart from this, another big contributor to WhatsApp’s success when it came to video calls was simply the attitude of the majority of Indians. The LocalCircles survey reported that 25% of respondents reported not wanting to switch to other platforms because they were quite happy and contented with the one they were using currently.
All in all, this survey, besides making it clear that WhatsApp is currently dominating both messaging and the video call space in India, also showed that the homegrown JioMeet has miles to go before it could get itself a slice of the entire video conferencing space in the country.
The only scenario in which JioMeet gains faster traction is wherein Zoom somehow gets somehow abruptly banned. We will keep you updated on all future developments. Until then stay tuned.
