Developers embrace WebRTC to build audio, video apps

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: TokBox, a Telefónica Digital company, today released the results of global survey of 1,161 participants regarding developer community attitudes towards WebRTC.

The report, which found rapidly emerging interest from larger organizations (1,000+ employees), also found rapid WebRTC adoption amongst smaller companies (fewer than 500 employees) where more than one in four (27.1 per cent) developers say WebRTC is already critical to their work.

Enterprise developers are particularly drawn to the ability to avoid downloads and also the simplicity, with no requirement for an AV expert. Alternatively, for SMBs, WebRTC's lower latency and higher video/audio quality are key factors.

While still emerging, enterprise developers claim to have a higher degree of expertise, with one in ten (11 per cent) claiming expert status, vs 5.9 per cent for SMBs.

Other key findings from the report included:

1. Rise and Rise: Three in four developers intend to increase their usage of WebRTC over the next 12 months, 50 per cent of them by a "significant amount";

2. Imperfect evolution: The biggest missing element of WebRTC is the inability for mobile/web interoperability (35 per cent), followed by multi-party group support (23 per cent), archiving/recording (15.5 per cent) and phone to video chat connection (14 per cent). Only 4 per cent thought "nothing was wrong" with WebRTC;

3. Death of the client download: A major factor driving the move towards WebRTC is the removal of the need to download any client or software. Other drives included low latency/less delay, not needing to be an AV specialist to use WebRTC, and higher audio/video resolution;

4. A legitimate data channel: As opposed to SMBs where interest in WebRTC for data (5.2 per cent say they will use it) and audio (6.1 per cent) is virtually non-existent, enterprise developers are more likely to build apps utilising these channels (10.4 per cent will use data, 11.7 per cent voice), although video capability is the most significant area of interest across both groups (86 per cent for SMBs, 75 per cent for enterprises).

5. Flash is fading: 41 per cent of respondents do not intend to use Flash at all over the next 12 months, 19 per cent will decrease usage. SMBs are more likely to use Flash, with 18 per cent expecting to increase usage vs only 12 per cent for enterprises. In comparison, 75 per cent will increase usage of WebRTC across both SMBs and enterprises;

6. Impact beyond video conferencing: Beyond video conferencing and telecommunications, the number one industry expected to adopt WebRTC is Customer Service (25 per cent), Education (23 per cent) and Medical/Health industries (17 per cent).

Ian Small, CEO of TokBox, commented on the findings: "These results overwhelmingly show that WebRTC is at the heart of change in the developer community, affecting industries well beyond communications."

"With OpenTok we have focused on evolving WebRTC into an enterprise-grade solution and the clear appetite from larger organizations shows we are on the right track. As the Web becomes a genuine platform for voice and video, we are seeing the imagination of the community drive a whole raft of use cases," added Small.