Zoom App Download From Play Store
Tabatha Pasqua
Video conferencing platform use has skyrocketed as people turn to remote work and e-learning, and Zoom has witnessed a tremendous surge in popularity. This popularity, though, has brought increased scrutiny that has revealed several issues with the platform and prompted big tech companies to ban the use of Zoom for business purposes.
We have written about fake Zoom applications floating outside the Google Play Store, and we were wondering if these binaries ever make it onto the devices of real victims. This led us to an important question: where do people download the Zoom client when they are about to start a meeting for the first time?
Starting January 1st this year, we have identified over 100,000 out of 750,000 cases where people have downloaded the Zoom application from places other than Google Play. That is, over 10% of users are risking their safety by downloading Zoom binaries from unofficial sources.
We can only extrapolate from this that people are confused as to where to download Zoom, so they resort to Google searches which might take them to third-party markets or other unofficial (read risky and questionable) distribution points.
So, how can we know whether an APK is installed from a third-party or from a sanctioned market? The answer is simple: we look at the file paths of specific scanned binaries that have the fingerprints of known Zoom APK versions. A simple query in our threat intelligence repository shows the following file paths and binary occurrences for official Zoom binaries.
As expected, the vast majority of these binaries are generically saved to the Download folder. Other custom downloader software usually have their own dedicated download folders, as do Google Chrome (/Android/data/com.android.chrome/files/Download/zoom.apk ) and UC Browser (/UCDownloads/zoom.apk).
This situation brings another important observation. As shown in the maps above, this behavior is not isolated to China, where sideloading is normal. This is a global phenomenon, confirmed in North America, South America and Europe. Users who cannot access Google Play to download Zoom seem to resort to third-party markets such as aptoide.
The app is Zoom, the app that connected pretty much everyone during the early pandemic but like every good thing, downloads eventually dropped. I covered Zoom over on This Week in Apps a whole bunch of times in the last couple of years.
The future of business is more virtual. The pandemic made that quite clear, and there are a few competitors that want to be the go-to solution for that. The leader, Zoom, wasn't doing any real ASO until recently, so it's nowhere to be seen. Who is?
The top result for this keyword is very surprising! TeamSnap isn't exactly a Zoom competitor but is when it comes to ASO. It's important to keep that in mind - a competitor is anyone who ranks for a keyword you're targeting. Regardless of their features.
Hang on to that thought - I think I know what's going on here, but we need to look at the rest first and come back to this one at the end. The gist - it's an algo quirk I covered a couple of times before + accidental hyper-focus.
Right below it is Microsoft Teams, which is the kind of app I'd expect to see here. Microsoft is doing a lot of things right here - no duplication, keeping this short and focused, and has a good ratings coverage.
In third place we have Google Chat, an app I forgot existed even though I use Google Meet all the time... Google Chat is where it is because it isn't getting nearly as many ratings as Microsoft and while it uses the entire term in the visible metadata and keeps things short, uses the keywords in reverse which we know isn't good for ranks.
Business apps, which is what I'd associate with "team chat", are at an inherent disadvantage here. But! These algo signals aren't preventing apps in other categories from ranking, just making it harder for them to rank. That's why Microsoft, Google, and Crew need more new ratings + good keyword placement.
I expanded the results chart to include the first 7 results because that's where Slack is, another tool I use a lot. Slack isn't a sport app, doesn't get many new ratings, and doesn't do its keyword placement correctly. Naturally, it can't crack the top 5.
All three issues are very common for enterprise apps. Why? Because whoever is doing ASO doesn't have the last say and the name is considered "branding" which is under the purview of an executive that doesn't understand ASO at all.
App Store Optimization is part art and part science. I say it a lot, and I mean it. The art part is what I've been talking about in this Keyword Teardown and in my App Teardowns. The science part is where our simple and intuitive ASO tools come into play.
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