Technology companies present surprising numbers in the face of adversity.
By Brooke Wu ’23
The Coronavirus has had many devastating impacts on humanity during the past several months. Despite the perils and devastation that COVID-19 has caused, though, a few positive things have come. Notably, many businesses have rather unexpectedly found meteoric success thanks to the Coronavirus.
The most notable and formidable example would be Zoom Video Communications, a cloud-based teleconferencing software. Although it was founded by Eric Yuan in 2011, Zoom was only used by a rather niche userbase until 2020 rolled around. In April this year, it was reported that the number of Zoom users had increased from 200 million to 300 million in only a few days, which is no small feat – especially considering that Zoom’s user count was 10 million in December of 2019. Additionally, in June, Zoom was worth almost $50 billion more than it had been before the pandemic. While Zoom was already labelled as a “unicorn” company (a term that refers to privately-held startup companies valued at over $1 billion) years before the Coronavirus, it has miraculously become even more successful because of the new need to telecommunicate due to quarantine.
Likewise, the success of the sanitary materials business has skyrocketed thanks to the pandemic. In June 2020, it was predicted that the value of the global sanitary paper product manufacturing market would rise from $65.8 billion in 2019 to $107.9 billion in 2020 as people scramble to buy out every single sanitary product in stores worldwide. While this number is expected to fall and stabilize at about $94 billion in year 2023, this temporary spike in sanitary product sales has been nothing but unexpected yet good news for the suppliers of these products. And of course, it would be ridiculous to not mention the increase in the usage and sales of masks internationally. So far, clothing brands such as Athleta and Banana Republic have sold $130 million worth of reusable masks in their most recently completed quarters. The online platform Etsy has assisted its creators in selling almost $350 million in mask sales alone.
Another industry that has unexpectedly risen during the Coronavirus pandemic is the video game industry. As people have been forced to stay home during quarantine, unable to physically interact with their friends, video games have served as a primary form of entertainment for many. Multiplayer online games in particular, most notably Among Us and Fall Guys have become even more popular due to this pandemic, even for those who would not typically label themselves as a “gamers”. Other games that were recently released and have been huge successes include Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which sold roughly 22.4 million units by August 2020, and the first part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake, which sold 3.5 million units within 3 days and is now the fastest-selling PS4 exclusive, beating Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018) and God of War (2018). While the success of New Horizons and FFVIIR could potentially be attributed to the pre-existing popularity of both the Animal Crossing and Final Fantasy franchises, these two games have well-exceeded sales expectations, most likely as a result of quarantine. Between March and April of this year, Microsoft released information that there had been a 130% increase in multiplayer engagement. In May, Nintendo reported that sales of the Nintendo Switch console had gone up by 24%. While the video game industry was notably more popular than the teleconferencing and sanitary product industries before the Coronavirus, it has only risen even higher (rather unpredictably) over the course of the year.
All in all, 2020 has been a chaotic year full of surprises, most of which have unfortunately had a negative impact. However, certain businesses have miraculously been able to strike it lucky by supplying products that fulfill the desires of people that have been heavily influenced by the Coronavirus pandemic.