On June 26, 2020, Agora, a sound network, landed on NASDAQ. The ticker symbol is API, and it has become the “first share of the global real-time interactive cloud”.
The following content is from the official Agora official account of the audio network
The successful listing is an important milestone for the market to recognize the value of our past professional services and technology. It’s also a starting point for our vision of making real-time interaction as ubiquitous as air and water.
In Q1, 2021, the average monthly real-time audio and video consumption minutes of the audio network exceeded 50 billion minutes for the first time, reaching a new historical height. In the Q1 2021 results released last month, total revenue hit a record high of $40.23 million; More than 306,000 apps were registered globally, up 67% year on year. The number of active customers reached 2,324, up 98% year on year. Our customers are in more than 200 countries and regions all over the world.
Since the inception of SoundNet, we have identified the future development space of real-time Internet and started to dig deep in this field. In the opinion of audio network, real-time interaction is not simply the information exchange represented by voice call or video conference, but more about creating a shared scene and space for real-time interaction.
We know how difficult it is to bring a new track to market. But in fact, we created the concept and industry of real-time interaction (RTE) and turned it into a fast growing new industry track.
This is the result of the hard work of all the developers, customers, partners and all the VoiceNet partners. Together, we have created a myriad of amazing application scenarios, such as real-time chorus, intelligent operation lights, remote ultrasound, space kill, meta universe and more.
Here, we share with all RTE developers, customers, and partners some of our most memorable moments of the past year:
“RTE” stands for all the products and technologies needed to build real-time interactive application scenarios. In addition to the core RTC, it also includes signaling, whiteboard, recording, storage, IM, and so on. In the past year, we have been constantly consolidating the core technology of RTC, and at the same time, we have been carrying out the multi-dimensional product line layout to build the RTE product layout.
In April 2021, Sound Net released a new version of Agora Native SDK 3.4.0, which added richer functions such as real-time bel canto sound, screen sharing, virtual metronometer, etc. At the same time, it significantly upgraded the stability, compatibility and security compliance of the SDK, providing a smoother and low-delay interactive experience.
In March 2021, VoiceNet officially released the first APAAS product in the education industry, “Smart Classroom”, which helps educational institutions and developers to launch their own brand, full-featured online interactive teaching platform within 15 minutes at the earliest, saving 90% of development time. Two months after its launch, the number of registered customers of LingLing Classroom exceeds 1000, the number of supported classes exceeds 500,000 / month, and the total number of students covering the world exceeds 4 million.
In March 2021, Sound Net released “Interactive Whiteboard”, the industry’s first white board PaaS product supporting H5 courseware. The interactive whiteboard can quickly realize real-time interactive whiteboard collaboration among multiple people, and supports various functions such as H5 courseware interaction, dynamic PPT display, real-time synchronization of trajectory, synchronization with audio and video, etc. Among them, H5 courseware provides text, picture, table, audio, video and other forms of display and interaction, to help improve the real-time interaction experience of the classroom and enhance the interest of the teaching scene.
In February 2021, SoundNet pioneered a page-recording solution based on the industry’s pain points. WYSIWYG can be realized in page recording, and audio and video, whiteboard, courseware, chat information and other contents can be recorded simultaneously in real time without additional bandwidth and performance overhead. The recording process does not affect the real-time interactive experience of any anchor or audience.
In January 2021, Huexin joined the big family of Voice Network. The company started as IM, providing developers with a secure and reliable instant messaging network, and is a leader in the instant messaging market. In addition, Huanxin’s customer service cloud business is also in the first echelon in China, with a wide range of high-quality customer base. The joining of Huexin provides more powerful IM capabilities and experience for VoiceNet to build RTE real-time interaction core capabilities. The combination of the two parties will also jointly create the strongest RTC+IM product portfolio in the real-time interactive cloud industry.
In December 2020, VoiceNet pioneered the low delay, strong synchronization and light interactive live broadcasting product “SpeedLive”. Speed live broadcast is mainly aimed at live broadcast scenes with high requirements for text, whiteboard and other messages interaction delay, or frequent switching between strong and weak interactions. The delay between anchor and audience is between 1.5s-2s, which is more than 80% lower than that of traditional CDN live broadcast scheme. Meanwhile, the delay difference between 90% of audience and audience in the live broadcast room is less than 500ms. It can meet the needs of the audience for strong synchronization scenes, such as live broadcast of e-commerce, large class education and live test answering.
In December 2020, the RTSA SDK was upgraded and optimized, and two sub-products RTSA Lite and RTSA Pro were released. RTSA Lite is designed for lightweight devices with limited resources and is suitable for wearable and portable smart devices such as smart watches, smart cameras and smart speakers. RTSA Pro is for experience-first, resource-rich devices, suitable for unmanned vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, intelligent robots and other scenarios.
Before its listing in 2020, Sonnet first proposed the concept of RTE. From RTC to RTE, as the pioneer, Sonnet has been constantly expanding the industry boundaries. Looking back over the past year, the combination of online and offline has become the trend, and the demand for real-time interaction has grown exponentially, infiltrating all industries and becoming a universal capability in the future. As a result, “RTE” has become an independent track recognized by the industry, media and investors and received unprecedented attention. After defining a new industry, Sound Net is once again innovating in the process of defining industry standards and polishing more application scenarios with customers.
In July 2020, based on nearly one trillion minutes of user experience data and massive user subjective experience evaluation, VoiceNet defined and launched the first experience quality standard XLA in the RTE industry, which is also the first quantifiable, verifiable and payable experience quality standard and guarantee built around the actual experience of users. Index not up to standard, if any, sound network will pay for the customer, according to the specific situation from monthly bills some or all of the costs, this commitment also shows the net on the real-time interaction in the field of technical strength and quality of service on the market at present no other service providers to similar promises to real-time audio and video services.
The trusted relationship between our customers and partners has enabled us to work together to create a myriad of amazing applications and innovations, making us the industry’s first provider of industry-specific solutions. For example, Metaverse, real-time chorus, interactive podcast, smart work light, Watch Party, remote ultrasound consultation, etc.
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6. Metaverse
With the growing maturity and popularity of VR/AR, 5G and other technologies, the concept of Metaverse has the possibility to be realized. In early 2021, SoundNet joined the HTC Vive ISV Partner Program. By combining SoundNet’s leading real-time interaction technology with HTC’s innovative technologies in VR and XR, SoundNet will create unprecedented virtual environments and great experiences for developers.
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Real-time chorus
In April 2021, sownet also helped the famous mini KTV brand “Mida” to realize the first complete “real-time chorus” scene solution that supports multi-terminal, multi-person chorus and high-pitched quality in China, ending the situation that the domestic karaoke industry has been exploring the “real-time chorus” scene for a long time, but has not been launched.
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Interactive podcast
In January 2021, with the help of RTC technology, “Interactive Podcast” became popular all over the world. As a new interactive scene of online interest and topic chat, full communication and interactivity made this scene get wide attention and application in the global scope. SoundNet has launched the industry-leading “Interactive Podcasting” scenario solution, which gives audiences an unprecedented sense of participation and interactive experience, and has been unanimously recognized by customers at home and abroad.
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Watch Party
In 2020, Watch Party scene will gradually rise on social networking platforms and video websites in the global market, and audio network will provide real-time interactive solutions including audio and video streaming for Watch Party scene of “Gimmer” in the Chinese market and virtual theater “Scener” in the international market.
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Intelligent work light
Smart homework lights are becoming the focus of the online education and IoT market, addressing the pain point for many parents who help their children with homework remotely. Over the past year, SoundNet has provided support for a number of smart homework lamps in China, helping parents and teachers to provide remote care, accompanying reading and online homework guidance to their children anytime and anywhere through real-time audio and video.
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Remote ultrasonic
Digital medical treatment is a very important scene for people’s lives. Since November last year, the sound network helped Guangzhou Iridium to launch the remote real-time ultrasound examination system in many counties across the country. Through the remote consultation system of Iridium, ultrasound doctors in county hospitals connected with doctors in primary health centers hundreds of kilometers away. An online “face to face” ultrasound consultation for several patients helped the local community solve the problem of “difficulty in seeing a doctor” and promoted the balanced development of high-quality medical resources.
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Video medical insurance
E-government services, in December 2020, under the power of voice network, medical insurance bureau launched the first national health care system in heilongjiang province video remote service platform, from the previous “online office” upgraded to a more convenient “video”, users only need to the staff through APP or small program launch video calls, and through the facial recognition technology to handle can be quickly.
In addition to the above scenario, over the past year, sound network for real-time bel canto, cloud, cloud invigilation, remote video game financing/loan, video car insurance claims, remote medical consultation/training, space kill, video interview, cloud fitness, online activities, VR, electricity live concert, cloud, VR shopping, online study lounges, and many other innovative scenario optimization of interactive experience.
As an enabler of the real-time Internet track, in the past, sound-net used more technologies and products to empower developers. However, with the continuous improvement of the ecology, sound-net is not only providing products and technologies, but also enabling developers by integrating more resources, platforms and introducing the power of capital. We are committed to creating an RTE ecosystem that covers the whole life cycle and service process of developers. Over the past year, Voices has achieved this goal through a series of events and projects such as RTE2020 Real Time Internet Conference, Cloud Market 2.0 Upgrade, Real Time Internet Entrepreneurial Challenge, and Programming Challenge.
In 2015, in order to promote global developers better real-time audio and video industry technology exchange and sharing, sound network established in less than two years, the first real-time Internet conference held of the world’s biggest, has held six sessions, accumulated tens of thousands of global higher-ups, technology developers, industry experts, investors, and other industry.
With innovations in technical capabilities and application scenarios, SoundNet continues to expand the boundaries of real-time interaction. In 2020, the Real-Time Internet Conference will be upgraded from the “RTC Conference” to the “RTE (Real-Time Engagement Conference”. After the upgrade, it will not only include RTC technical exchanges, but also cover various fields such as industry observation, ecological construction, entrepreneurship and innovation around the real-time Internet. It has created a comprehensive conference that creates value and continues to empower developers, entrepreneurs, practitioners and upstream and downstream ecological partners in the real-time Internet industry.
Agora cloud market is the foundation of acoustic network to build a real-time interactive industrial chain ecosystem. Under this support, it will continue to extend and expand. As more and more partners’ products and technical solutions enter the Agora cloud market, real-time whiteboard, voice yellow detection, oral evaluation, voice transcription and other capabilities are deeply integrated with the API of the audio network, so that developers can integrate in a one-stop way to achieve a complete real-time interactive scene.
The Agora cloud market 2.0 version will be fully upgraded in 2020. On this basis, developers can complete online selection, price comparison, testing, account opening and other links on the audio network platform. Improve the operating efficiency of developers, reduce the customer acquisition cost and maintenance cost of partners, and facilitate the scenario expansion of partner products’ self-service capability through rich ecological product matrix.
In 2020, with the aim of finding more unicorns that create innovative value for the industry, Voicewit.com, together with Wuyuan Capital and QiQiQuantan, held the world’s first real-time Internet Entrepreneurial Challenge, looking for enterprises and scenarios that “use real-time interactive technology to innovate” around the world. The activity attracted more than 100 high-quality enterprises to take part. Finally, we won three enterprises with innovative products in the field of social networking, vocal music teaching and collaborative office. With the power of capital, we will promote the development and prosperity of the real-time Internet entrepreneurial ecology.
In June 2021, the “RTE 2021 Programming Challenge”, jointly hosted by Agora and Huexin, came to a successful conclusion. After two months of fierce competition, 46 teams from more than 200 teams broke out of the tight circle, entered the final for the wonderful defense. The Coding Challenge is an online hackathon for RTC developers, college students, entrepreneurs, geek businesses, and individual developers around the world. The website has been held for three years in a row. More than 1,000 developers have formed more than 500 teams and created more than 100 excellent works. It is committed to allowing developers to give full play to their imagination, create more real-time audio and video interactive scenes and innovative applications that use RTC technology to enable, and expand the boundaries of RTC technology capabilities.
In the process of constructing RTE ecology, Sound Net has also launched a series of operating mechanisms, among which the “Entrepreneurship Support Plan” is an important step. In march, a sound network formally issued “Agora entrepreneurship support plan”, intercom took 1 billion minutes, and polymerization in ecological 50 + partners, venture capital funds, startup hubs etc, to provide real-time Internet entrepreneurs track cover technology products, marketing, capital, business support the 11 of the four resources, Almost throughout the entire life cycle of the start-up.
Going forward, we will continue to embrace low code and customized solutions that make it easy for developers to integrate real-time audio and video technology. The success of SoundNet cannot be achieved without the support of all the developers and customers, and we look forward to seeing more exciting new scenarios created by RTE technology in the future.