Verizon purchased BlueJeans in 2020 for $400 million
Verizon is shutting down its video conferencing service BlueJeans three years after purchasing it for $400 million as a way to bolster its position in the enterprise communications space.
Verizon bought the platform during the COVID-19 pandemic, which shut down offices around the world. Getting into the video conferencing space made a lot of sense at the time as these types of collaboration tools kept businesses running.
But now, Verizon is pointing to the “changing market landscape” for the platform’s demise. Likely, the carrier is referring both to the fact that the workforce is returning to offices in droves and to the comparative success of other video conferencing applications — most notably Zoom, but also others like Google Hangouts. In a mass email, the company called the decision “difficult.”
The announcement came somewhat as a surprise, perhaps even to Verizon, which recently recently introduced a free basic plan and expanded its partner program. The company was even looking to bring BlueJeans to augmented reality (AR) glasses through a collaboration with AR company Vuzix. Together, the pair set out to utilize Verizon 5G and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) network to run BlueJeans on Vuzix’s smart glasses product to expand the platform’s potential use cases.
According to reports, basic and free trial users will lose their services at the end of August, and paid services will run until at least December.
