Several workplace software makers recently have added AI capabilities to their suite of apps. Both Google and Microsoft have been rolling out AI features to help automate some tasks, including drafting and editing in Google Docs and Microsoft Word. With its soon-to-be-released documents product, Zoom is increasing its competition with Microsoft and Google. It has competing products for video conferencing, chat and email. But the two giants dominate the market for workplace content creation apps, and some experts say it would take a big disruption to change workers’ default documents app.
“Something would have to fundamentally change the nature of how we create content to upend the market,” said Craig Roth, research vice president for market insights firm Gartner. Replacing the two market leaders in the space “is unlikely in the near future.”
Microsoft has long ruled the authorship and email market, which includes apps like word processors, spreadsheets and presentations, with an 83.5 percent share in 2022, according to Gartner data. Google, which has slowly been gaining market share, owns 15.6 percent. And all other providers own less than 1 percent of the market.
Zoom isn’t as far behind when it comes to collaborative applications, which include web conferencing and virtual event tools, according to market intelligence firm IDC. Last year, Zoom’s market share was 11.2 percent, trailing Microsoft at 29.7 percent and Google at 13.5 percent.
Zoom may try to leverage the masses it attracted to its video conferencing product to adopt its word processing tool. At the end of the second quarter, ended July 31, Zoom reported it had 218,100 enterprise customers, representing a 7 percent increase from a year earlier. The company said Zoom Docs will make it easier for workers to collaborate on a document within the Zoom products they already use so they don’t have to toggle between tabs or apps.
“Am I giving my train of thought to the [document] or am I giving it to the attendees and participants?” said Theresa Larkin, lead of employee experience product marketing for Zoom. “We’re able to streamline [documents] so you don’t have to juggle both worlds.”
Users can easily pull information from the meetings, chats, emails and project management tools from the Zoom platform into their documents. They also can create customized layouts and workflows, tag colleagues on action items, assign tasks, track and manage projects, and link pages and embed them in a visual tree so people can see how information is connected. Users also are expected to be able to drag and drop content blocks to add tables, charts and images into their documents.
Wayne Kurtzman, research vice president of social, communities and collaboration for IDC, said Zoom doesn’t have to displace the incumbents to be successful in this space. It just needs to offer a set of features that work and make users more productive.
“How we work in five to seven years from now is going to be significantly different than we do today,” he said. “That opens up opportunities. The question becomes who can meet the evolving needs.”