2021 Real‑Time Audio‑Video Trends: WebRTC Updates, New Products & Market Insights

Introduction

The real‑time audio‑video (RTC) ecosystem has accelerated rapidly in 2021, with new standards, browser upgrades, and a wave of product releases from major players. This article compiles the most noteworthy technical updates, product announcements, and market movements that are shaping the future of RTC.

Tencent Meeting 3.0 and New Webinar Mode

At the 2021 Tencent Digital Ecosystem Conference (Nov 4), Tencent Meeting released version 3.0. Key highlights include:

Emphasis on reducing consensus‑building costs in large teams.

Introduction of a webinar mode supporting up to 50 000 participants, with integrated registration, ticketing, custom themes, and in‑session interaction.

Opening of an API + SDK + third‑party app marketplace, initially onboarding recruitment‑related SaaS such as MOKA, XiaoHuaZhuo, and MianBei.

Microsoft’s Metaverse Preview

During the Ignite conference (Nov 2), Microsoft previewed its metaverse vision built on Teams and the Mesh cloud service. Features include virtual avatars, shared Office documents in a 3D space, and integration with HoloLens AR glasses, though the high hardware cost limits current B‑side adoption.

Firefox’s Largest WebRTC Upgrade (M96)

Firefox is preparing its most significant WebRTC update in over a year, moving to version M96 after a year‑long development cycle. The upgrade adds support for Opus + RED redundant encoding, improving audio robustness on weak networks. Developers can enable it via the setCodecPreferences API; Chrome defaults to a single RED packet.

Reference implementation and demo are available at https://github.com/fippo/opus-fec, and the Janus media server already supports this feature.

Safari 15.0 WebRTC Bugs

Safari’s iOS 15 update introduced many WebRTC‑related features (Insertable Streams, HTTP/3, etc.) but also caused crashes when pushing streams and failures when server‑side compression is enabled. These regressions highlight the fragility of WebRTC implementations across browsers.

Zoom Auto‑Captioning

Zoom added automatic live captioning for free accounts, currently supporting English only. The feature can be enabled via the Zoom web portal or the meeting toolbar, and Zoom also supports manual captions and third‑party caption services.

Apple SharePlay

iOS 15.1 introduced SharePlay, allowing FaceTime participants to watch videos, listen to music, or share screens synchronously. While the feature is currently iOS‑only, it demonstrates Apple’s strategy of leveraging its ecosystem to increase product stickiness.

Edge Browser Cloud‑Gaming Support

Edge has added support for cloud‑gaming services such as GeForce Now and Google Stadia, enabling low‑latency streaming of PC games via WebRTC‑based pipelines.

WebRTC SVC and Codec Evolution

WebRTC now supports VP9 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) as a default, moving SVC from an experimental command‑line flag to a standard API. However, hardware encoding trade‑offs remain, especially on mobile where enabling SVC may require dropping hardware codecs.

Chrome M97 Beta – WebTransport and SDP Changes

Chrome M97 (beta, released Jan 4 2022) brings the long‑awaited WebTransport API, offering low‑latency, bidirectional client‑server communication over HTTP/3 and QUIC, effectively superseding WebSocket for many use cases. The release also removes the SDES key‑exchange mechanism, forcing DTLS‑based encryption for better security.

Other Notable Updates

WebKit 135 adds enhanced audio‑video capture, rendering, and end‑to‑end latency metrics.

Daily, a WebRTC PaaS provider, raised $40 M B‑round, emphasizing rapid integration and online‑medical use cases.

Subspace aims to build a global real‑time network with packet acceleration, TURN acceleration, and SIP‑phone acceleration.

RingCentral introduced AI‑powered features: auto‑focus tracking, low‑light compensation, and video filters.

Conclusion

The 2021 RTC landscape is characterized by rapid standardization (SVC, WebTransport), aggressive product rollouts, and increasing convergence of audio‑video with AI and metaverse concepts. Developers and enterprises must stay abreast of browser updates, codec evolutions, and emerging cloud‑gaming and remote‑control services to leverage the full potential of real‑time communication.