Amazon, Facebook, and Google Nest today announced Zoom video calls are coming to their smart displays in a shift that could shake up how people receive video calls or interact with AI assistants. This is the first non-native video offering for Facebook Portal and Google Nest products. Before today, Facebook Portal users had to make calls using Messenger or WhatsApp, and Google Nest users could only make calls with Duo and Meet. Zoom is also one of the first non-native video call services for Amazon smart display, but Skype calls were introduced for the Amazon Echo Show in 2018.
Zoom video calls will be available on Portal devices in September, and on the Amazon Echo Show and a range of Assistant-enabled smart displays by the end of the year, a Zoom spokesperson told VentureBeat.
Bringing Zoom to smart displays could leverages the video calling service’s recent rapid growth and the fact that smart displays are already in millions of homes. Zoom has grown rapidly in the midst of the global pandemic that forced many to work from home. In April, for example, daily active users grew from 10 million to 200 million in the span of three months.
The news today follows the launch of the Zoom for Home brand last month, which focuses on bringing Zoom to devices like smart displays. Zoom Room Appliances, hardware Zoom sells for controlling video calls in a workplace setting, launched last year.
The successor of the smart speaker, a typical smart display has a video camera, screen, microphone array, and an AI assistant that responds to queries with voice or visuals that appear on the display. In Q3 2019, Canalys concluded that 6.3 million smart display units have sold worldwide.
The news today continues to blur the line between AI assistants marketed primarily as assistants for getting things done at home and on the go and enterprise services at a time when more people are working from home. Amazon and Facebook have launched enterprise versions of their smart speakers or displays, with the launch of Amazon for Business in 2017 and a Workplace from Facebook integration last fall. In addition to Zoom, Facebook is also opening Portal, Portal+, and Portal Mini devices to BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, and Webex. Portal TV support for
Microsoft has not released a smart display, but is attempting to pivot AI assistant Cortana to do more in the workplace. As part of that effort, Microsoft killed off third-party Cortana skills earlier this year and last fall launched Cortana in Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook to do things like read people’s emails and schedule meetings.
