As more people continue to stay at home in quarantine due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, a rise in web-based services and alternatives is the next big challenge for the tech community to face. Microsoft’s Skype video calling took a surge of 70 percent within a month, said the company on Monday. The service is now being used by about 40 million people globally.
Meanwhile, Skype-to-Skype calls were bumped up in number by 220 percent compared to just a month ago. The stocks of various similar video-conferencing companies saw a rise after many countries including India went into lockdown. Also seeing a rise in stocks were gaming companies, serving as entertainment to millions of people confined to their homes.
Watch: Top 5 apps providing free services during coronavirus pandemic
Microsoft is also making a bunch of changes to its Teams platform. Microsoft Teams helps better workplace management, serving as an interface for coworkers to communicate efficiently. The application is used by over 44 million people every day, reports the company.
Microsoft is also prioritizing its cloud services to first responders and emergency services. This means that even if the scale of the Coronavirus pandemic grows larger, the company has partnered with governments across the world to support critical infrastructure and emergency management services on priority.
In other news, Microsoft recently revealed that it is re-branding its popular productivity suite Office 365 to Microsoft 365. Starting April 21, the suite will also come with new features including a family safety application that will help users manage screen time. This app can be used to monitor screen time across Windows PCs, Android and Xbox.
Microsoft’s Bing team meanwhile, launched a global Coronavirus tracking website. The website provides up-to-date infection statistics for each country and is accessible at bing.com/covid. The COVID-19 tracker currently lists 786,228 total confirmed cases globally. The USA is currently the country with the most number of confirmed cases at over 1,64,200 positive cases. There have so far been over 3,000 deaths in the USA. Meanwhile, the global Coronavirus death count has crossed over 37,800 deaths.
