Work-from-home solutions popular amid virus outbreak
February 11, 2020 Category China News Round-up, Weekly
As Chinese companies return to work after the extended Chinese New Year break, many are requesting at least part of their employees to work from home to limit the spreading of the coronavirus. The jump in remote work has created an unexpected opportunity for smart work platforms to acquire new users. ByteDance’s Feishu, Huawei’s WeLink and Kingsoft Office have launched various free communication and video conferencing services to enable the public to work from home, the China Daily reports. WeLink, Huawei’s smart teamwork platform, said that 15,000 enterprises opened new WeLink accounts on February 2, and the average number of enterprises that have opened such accounts last week is growing by 50% every day. ByteDance’s team collaboration platform Feishu is offering free remote office and audio and video meetings for its users until May. The office suite also provides functions like instant communication, a calendar, and a cloud-based collaborative document platform.
According to the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, the market size of China’s smart office industry was about CNY23.4 billion in 2018, up 20.8% year-on-year. The figure is expected to reach CNY48.6 billion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.4%. Zhang Zhouping, Senior Analyst with the Internet Economy Research Institute of China E-commerce Research, said that remote work has become the most preferred alternative for many enterprises amid the current outbreak, as more people stay indoors and avoid public places. “At present, enterprises are facing an increasingly severe competitive environment, along with rising labor costs. The demand for efficiency improvement and cost reduction will drive the growth of the enterprise services market,” Zhang said.
Online education companies across China are seeing a surge in demand for study-at-home products as the coronavirus epidemic has hampered normal educational services in the country. Following the postponement of school semesters, over 80 educational companies have offered free online courses to students in China, a country that boasts nearly 280 million students ranging from kindergarten to universities. Leading online education startup Zuoyebang has offered free online classes on all major subjects from 8:00am to 5:40pm for students nationwide. Youdao, the education subsidiary of NetEase, is offering classes via live-streaming for 470,000 students that are enrolled for the company’s courses. Industry experts believe there are huge opportunities for the online education industry as the sector is quickly covering and penetrating many corners of the nation during the special period. Share prices of 20 online education companies have risen, including those of market leader TAL Education Group on the New York Stock Exchange, the China Daily reports.
Alibaba announced on January 30 that the full set of a home office system, developed by its mobile office tool DingTalk, will be offered free to 10 million firms. So far, over 6 million companies and organizations have used DingTalk’s online office products.
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