The U.S. Stock Research Agency learned that on February 23, Beijing time, the global real-time interactive cloud service provider Voice Network Agora (NASDAQ: API) announced the fourth quarter and annual financial report of 2021. According to the financial report, Soundnet achieved revenue of $40.39 million in the fourth quarter, an increase of 21.5% year-on-year. For the full year 2021, total revenue was $168 million, up 25.8% year-over-year.
In terms of customer size, as of December 31, 2021, Soundnet's global registered applications exceeded 405,000, an increase of 48.9% year-on-year; the number of active customers worldwide reached 2,670, an increase of 27.4% year-on-year. At the same time, the number of RTE service minutes provided by SoundNet in 2021 has exceeded 600 billion minutes.
"In the fourth quarter, we ended 2021 with strong performance growth. This year, The amount of real-time interaction used by Soundnet continued to grow, and the installation coverage of our SDK in global applications has far exceeded that of competitors. "We continue to create innovative solutions and technologies for metaverse scenarios, such as MetaKTV, MetaChat and 3D spatial audio, which empower developers to create borderless real-time interactive experiences in the virtual world and strengthen our position as the premier infrastructure service provider of metaverses." ”
Ranked first in the RTC market share
With the coverage of more and more real-time interactive application scenarios and the landing of solutions, SoundNet has always maintained the first position in the market share of the RTC track. According to the "China Video Cloud Market Tracking (First Half of 2021)" report released by IDC, the market share of Agora in the audio and video communication (RTC) track in the first half of 2021 reached 43.4%, ranking first in the market and exceeding the 2nd-8th place combined. Not only that, since audio and video communications were included in the professional track of the IDC video cloud market for research in 2019, SoundNet has always maintained the market share of the track first and has an absolute leading share advantage.
The report pointed out that Agora continues to focus on real-time interactive tracks, complementing interactive capabilities such as IM on the basis of existing RTC products, and exploring multiple innovative scenarios such as real-time chorus, interactive podcasts, virtual idol live broadcasts, and MetaChat meta-chats.
With the penetration and application of RTC technology in various scenarios, the RTC market has also ushered in explosive growth. Wei Yunfeng, IDC China Industry Cloud Service Research Manager, said that in the short term, although it faces variables such as intensified competition and weak growth in some tracks, China's video cloud market is still in rapid growth. Video cloud is accelerating the removal from the status of transmission pipeline, reflecting a richer connotation, extreme HD, extreme interaction and extreme immersion of video capabilities, as well as the integration of AI technology full-link video optimization and processing solutions, has become an Internet video customers to improve video quality, expand video form, enrich video gameplay necessary capabilities, and even support the future of various metaverse ideas of an important cornerstone.
Through the latest data of IDC, it can be seen that SoundNet has always occupied an absolute leading position in the RTC industry, which is not easy in the current RTC market with many giants. Behind this, on the one hand, it depends on the long-term layout and first-mover advantage of SoundNet in the RTC track, whether it is the best practice of scene solutions or technical strength, it has the most solid accumulation; on the other hand, it also lies in its strong innovation ability and ultimate pursuit of technology, and always adheres to the investment in scene, product and underlying technological innovation.
Expanded global customer base As the only fully compliant independent RTE service provider
While maintaining the first market share in the Chinese market, Soundnet's global business has further developed, the number of registered applications in the world has continued to increase, and the scale of customers has gradually expanded. As of December 31, 2021, Soundnet registered more than 405,000 applications worldwide, an increase of 48.9% year-on-year, and the number of active customers worldwide reached 2,670, an increase of 27.4% year-on-year. At the same time, the number of RTE service minutes provided by SoundNet in 2021 has exceeded 600 billion minutes.
The requirements for security compliance are becoming increasingly stringent around the world, especially for overseas enterprises, local regulators will strictly review the security of the enterprises themselves and whether the cloud service providers used are compliant, and once there is a risk event related to privacy and security, they will face heavy penalties from the regulatory authorities.
Recently, Agora officially obtained the ISO/IEC 27701 Privacy Information Management System Certification issued by DNV, an international authoritative quality certification and risk management organization. This marks that The control of Soundnet's information security and privacy-related management systems has entered the global advanced list, and will also bring customers a more solid information security guarantee.
In order to help more enterprises solve the advantages of overseas compliance, Soundnet has invested a huge amount of efforts in 2018 to build a 20-person security compliance team, forming a universal certification of all categories worldwide, and Now Soundnet has become the only independent RTE service provider in the world that is fully compliant.
Not only that, Soundnet has also established in-depth cooperation with the world's mainstream leading security compliance partners, including the authoritative standard certification body DNV·GL, and bishopfox, a leading security certification manufacturer in the US market, to further strengthen the confidence of cooperative customers and developers, and escort the application of all developers into the global market.
Focus on the metaverse The first multi-scenario solution
The concept of "meta-universe" is a hot topic of attention by various industries in 2021, and at the same time, it is also considered to be a new form of the next generation of Internet, which is one of the directions with the greatest development potential in the future. According to Gartner's latest projections, 25 percent of people in 2026 will be working, shopping, studying, socializing, or playing in the metaverse for at least an hour a day. Even if the final positioning of different industries for the metaverse has not yet been clarified, under the fusion of virtual reality, it is a scene that requires high quality, stability, and immersion, and the communication and interaction between players are inseparable from the real-time interaction of RTE, so RTE is also regarded as one of the underlying infrastructures for increasing the sense of presence and immersion in the metaverse.
From the perspective of RTE's industry, SoundNet constantly looks for technical solutions to help the metaverse evolve into a more realistic experience, meets the ultimate pursuit of interactive experience for users in different virtual scenarios, and helps enterprises and corresponding products to create metaverse scenarios faster. This quarter, SoundNet took the lead in the industry to launch three major solutions: MetaChat Meta Talk, MetaKTV Meta K Song and MetaLive Meta Live Broadcast, which is committed to providing interactive social networking, K songs and live broadcast methods in the new meta-universe scene.
The MetaChat Meta Chat solution provides a new way to chat - users participate in the chat with a virtual avatar, each chat room supports 16 players, each player can see the avatar of other players, and can interact with any player, and can also sit in any empty seat, drink at the bar, dance, etc. At the same time, support for 3D spatial audio can bring an immersive chat experience and a more immersive sense of presence for players in the chat room, making communication more efficient and interesting.
Soundnet MetaKTV MetaK Song Solution, covering 17W+ genuine MV resources, spherical stereoscopic space audio, 3D stage set, fancy interactive gameplay beyond the offline K song experience, to help developers and enterprises quickly create "K song in the meta-universe" scene, bringing more innovation and business growth space.
XRSPACE is a pioneer in virtual reality applications and a partner in The SoundNet's Voice Select Program. Recently, Sound Network and XRSPACE have created the world's first music meta-universe PartyOn, breaking through the limitations of space, allowing users to easily achieve multi-person real-time K songs in the metaverse built by PartyOn. Huang Jiyang, product leader of PartyOn, said: "To let users sing and dance together, the requirements for latency are particularly high, and the synchronization error of less than 50 ms is achieved through the technology of the sound network and our self-developed performance synchronization technology, which is also a low delay that only the 5G network can achieve, so that the vocals, songs and body performances can be completely together, and truly feel like they are on the spot." ”
MetaLive meta-live broadcast solution supports AR mode, avatar, real face 3 kinds of image mode, users can switch the camera image in the corresponding live broadcast scene according to their own needs. MetaLive offers an innovative form of live streaming: a 3D Super Live Show, where viewers can even join the streamer to explore new stories. Lower the threshold for anchor content production. At the same time, it greatly enhances the user's sense of on-the-spot participation, which can effectively enhance the user's stickiness and live broadcast duration.
Technological innovation Unlock new scenarios
Behind the rapid burst of new scenes is long-term technology accumulation and continuous technological innovation. This quarter, SoundNet further increased its R&D investment, maintained its technological leadership in the industry, and developed two cutting-edge technologies of "3D spatial audio" and "Agora Lipsync" that are applied to virtual scenes such as metaverse and voice social scenes, respectively.
Soundnet 3D spatial audio simulates the stereo sound field of the spherical area of the head through a pure software algorithm scheme, so that users have a sense of space in the audio listening. When the user operates the virtual character to move in the virtual scene, it can realize different sound effects according to the face orientation, sound source orientation, distance distance and upper and lower height of the virtual character, and perfectly simulate the real listening experience, of which the three black technologies of "3D spatial sound effect", air attenuation simulation and human voice blur have played a key role.
In terms of application scenarios, for scenarios such as chat rooms, online conferences, virtual activities, and online education, 3D spatial audio can effectively enhance users' online interaction and auditory experience. For Metaverse, VR, AR, virtual concerts, and online games, 3D spatial audio is expected to reconstruct the user's immersion and auditory experience in the virtual world.
In addition, Agora Lipsync (lip sync) technology, which has great application potential in speech social scenes, agora Lipsync does not need a camera, no facial expression capture technology, but through the generation adversarial network in the deep learning algorithm, intelligently associates the mouth shape and facial expression pronunciation in Chinese and English (or other languages), drives the portrait to simulate the mouth shape of the real person, and supports 2D portrait pictures and 3D portrait models. It will also have great application potential in scenarios such as chat rooms, interactive podcasts, and video conferencing.
2021 is a year of further normalization of the epidemic, and it is also a year of rapid development of the RTE industry and accelerated maturity and outbreak of RTE scenarios. According to the "RTE Vientiane Atlas" released by SoundNet at the RTE2021 Real-time Internet Conference, SoundNet services have covered more than 20 industry tracks and more than 200 scenarios. Real-time interaction as a future digital life infrastructure, the potential of the track is no less than artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain and other professional technology track, in the recent Voice Network released the first RTE track panoramic report "real-time interactive scene innovation ecological report" shows that it is expected that in 2025, the RTE industry will be a 100 billion scale market, the compound growth rate will reach more than 40% in 5 years. In the future, SoundNet will continue to deepen the RTE track, continuously expand the RTE product layout, provide a richer product portfolio to meet the needs of different scenarios, and will also give full play to the power of innovation, and work with customers and partners to deeply polish more abundant industry scenario solutions, so that real-time interaction is everywhere.