Zoom Video Communications Inc ZM is looking to expand beyond its core video conferencing service and offer an email and calendar service, The Information first reported Wednesday.
What Happened: Zoom has been quietly working on an email product that could advance to the testing phase in 2021, according to The Verge. It's unclear how advanced Zoom is on the calendar portion of the new suite.
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Why It's Important: Zoom looks to be playing catchup with industry giants that already offer a wide bundle of worker productivity tools, according to The Verge. Most notably, Microsoft Corporation MSFT is known for its Office 365 platform along with calendar and email tools and videoconferencing through Teams.
Zoom would also be up against a notable competitor in Google. The Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL unit has dominated the email market over the years with its Gmail platform that also has integrated calendar and videoconferencing tools.
What's Next: According to The Information, Zoom's expansion is based in part on job openings for skills that don't necessarily fit in with its core products. For example, a job posting is looking for employees to work on "exciting chat features."
Shares of Zoom were down nearly 6% on Wednesday following the reports.
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