The USB Cameras are making a come back in the Video Conferencing Market - Surprisely Logitech Benefits the Most

USB Camera are making a come back in the Video Conferencing Market

There are two major players in the video conferencing industry, the hardware-based and software-based systems. The cloud-based is the third minor player that starts to gain traction in the market. The traditional hardware codecs* are generally made by one of only a few companies like Cisco and Polycom. The equipment is usually sitting on a rack in a conference room. The software-based systems use a soft codec, which is cheaper than the hardware-based system since the Codecs are software-based. These platforms are Google Hangout**, Skype, and Apple's FaceTime.  However, soft codecs have several disadvantages, such as the loss of quality and dropped calls. Security is also another concern. Unlike the hard codec counterpart, soft codecs are usually proprietary, so they cannot communicate with one another like hardware-based systems use the standards-based H.323 family regardless of which companies' devices.

According to the latest research from Synergy Research Group released on June 22, 2020, the sales of USB conferencing cameras for video conferencing has increased. In the past, as the sales declined in the traditional hardware-based conferencing due to the rise of software-based platforms, the sales of USB video conferencing systems also declined. Since USB technology is cheaper than the more traditional video codec systems, when the cloud-based, Video-as-a-Services (VaaS) is on the rise, the USB cameras become the perfect match couple with the VaaS service.  Logitech, a USB camera manufacturer, is a clear market leader in USB, with a 65% market share in Q1.  The high-growth USB market has enabled Logitech to claim second place in the overall video conferencing market, second only to Cisco.  In Q1, USB video conferencing systems accounted for 36% of the video conferencing market revenues, up from 21% a year ago.

Meanwhile, the USB share of video rooms jumped to 41%, up from 35% a year ago.  Sales of USB video conferencing systems rose by 50%. Over the last twelve months, total system sales were running at around $2 billion.

"The biggest benefactors of the USB boom are vendors providing USB conferencing cameras, with Logitech leading the charge," said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group's founder and Chief Analyst. "These USB cameras work easily and cost-effectively with VaaS services from companies like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google, and others, and form a symbiotic relationship that is helping to propel the market. COVID-19 has now created even stronger momentum in a market that was already finding its stride."

Notes:

* A codec is a device or computer program which encodes or decodes a digital data stream or signal.

** Google Hangouts is an older product. It is different from Google Hangouts Meet, which is a cloud-based tool that rebranded to Google Meet on January 1, 2020.