Apple’s User Numbers for Final Cut Pro – A History

[Ronny Courtens]

Are you saying that there are people out there who actually buy a software after having been able to try it 30 days for free, and then they never use it?

– Ronny

[Michael Phillips]

The other difficult data point is FCPx is constantly at the top or near the top of “top grossing apps” in the App Store. There are guesses as to what number means, and what little is out there, points more to the iOS iTunes app store than it does to the OS X app store. For iOS, it means $47K per day (https://appleinsider.com/articles/13/06/28/iphone-apps-need-to-earn-47k-per-day-to-crack-app-stores-top-10-grossing) if we just assume that number for OS X apps, that would mean 157 copies of FCPx downloaded per day. For a one month period of 30 days, that is 4,710 copies. And after a year hanging out at the top of the list, that would be 56,520.

I did see, but can no longer find, that $250,000 was the number for OS X apps top grossing which puts that number at 836 copies per day. So all those numbers can be multipled by 5.3, putting a year’s worth of FCPx sales at 299,556.

I agree that “user” is an interesting term. Since FCPx can only be purchased via the app store, then “purchasers” would be a more precise number to use.

Michael

[Franz Bieberkopf]

I see no one caught that I transposed the 1999 & 2001 numbers to 2001 & 2003 (accidentally! and I spent so much time on it all!).

That doesn’t change anything of substance.

But I’ll use the opportunity to emphasize the two points that seem to have gone largely missed by comments so far: the first is that this Apple’s portrayal of itself, and the second is that the slopes are more interesting than the points.

Franz.

[Bill Davis]

My extra 2 cents.

I suspect these are simple unit sales figures – the lifeblood of public corporate reporting. My suspicion is that if you book a sale, it counts as ONE sale no matter how many users use that “seat.”

So when Apple says 1 million, I expect that’s paid seats. And just as with any other software sales stats, doesn’t account for pass-alongs, cracks or the actual number of machine installations, nor the total number people who have the software installed and operating – a number we’ll just never know.

It’s also equally important to recognize that, for example, in the Adobe Rental model, Someone subscribing to the full suite of Creative Cloud may never even open Bridge or Prelude, yet could they still claim a “sale” for the titles?

It’s murky water out there in software popularity statistics.

Maybe someone needs to ask the NSA to report stats on how many people OPEN which software programs in an average week? They probably (shudder) have that data available somewhere, even if they’re unlikely to admit it.

(kidding, of course.)

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[Bill Davis]

[Franz Bieberkopf] “But I’ll use the opportunity to emphasize the two points that seem to have gone largely missed by comments so far: the first is that this Apple’s portrayal of itself, and the second is that the slopes are more interesting than the points.”

Yep, the slopes are interesting.

But not as trend lines, to my thinking, more as indicators of the reality of the two different program approaches.

FCP Legacy was firmly “another” NLE. It broke little if any new ground in timeline editing. Other than a lower cost to entry, there wasn’t anything tremendously different about operating Legacy than operating AVID or Premier or Vegas.

With X, the whole approach to editing changed from timeline only – to database/timeline integration.

So the learning curve, as we’ve well established here – was totally different.

In that context, I think the curves make complete scenes. Initial rush of experimentation. Followed by a maturing user base and a perhaps slow but sure awakening to the capabilities of the new approach.

FWIW

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Paul Neumann]

Slopes or Points: The Debate

[Michael Phillips]

I think that is where Apple has the opportunity to differentiate between actual purchases and users. As mentioned, each purchase can be “used” on 5 different systems. So in theory, users versus unique purchases could be a factor of 5x without a true definition of what “users” mean.

Michael

[Marcus Moore]

I’m inclined to believe that Apple (and as noted by Philip who I trust on these points) counts sales as SALES. Over 1 million = over 1 million x $299. However many machines it’s being used on is unknown. Of all companies, Apple tends to be the most honest in accounting for this stuff. See their quarterly reports of SALES of devices, not shipments, not percentage increase from last year. No one else provides that hard info.

[Marcus Moore]

Great work Franz on collating all the relevant quotes- you just pulled the rug out from under one of my future blog posts! 😉

I have a chart here from a post I’m working on that might bring some additional colour to the curve on FCP X growth.

Though much info is NOT available for publication, joining AppAnnie did give me access to historical charts of MacAppStore sales. Top Grossing and Top Downloads for Paid or Free apps.

Here’s the chart showing FCPX’s placement on the US Top Paid Downloads (NOT highest grossing)

I’ve marked the graph with the Spring 2012 and Spring 2014 numbers. There’s a lot of fluctuation in the graph because it’s based on DAILY rank info. I think a monthly average would give us a clearer picture of what’s going on, but I haven’t had time to do that yet-

If top rank has any correlation with the number of sales (which I can only assume it must), then it seems FCPX’s rank on the scale has been on an upswing since about the release of 10.1.

Before December 2013 FCPX seems to have bounced around between 10th and 20th place for most of 2012/2013. Since last December though, it’s averaged between 5th and 15th.

Theoretically there’s a vertical axis here we’re missing- that would incorporate the growth of the MacAppStore as a whole. The only public number I could find was December 12, 2011- when Apple said they had reached 100 million downloads.

It would seem to me that if FCPX adoption was slowing as your graph depicts; then we’d be seeing something in the graph that looks more like 2012 than what’s happening so far in 2014.

All this is just interesting.

What I do find equally surprising, is that there’s actually so many data points in your graph. For a company as secretive as Apple, have they released more solid info than anyone else?

[Franz Bieberkopf]

[Marcus Moore] “Here’s the chart showing FCPX’s placement on the US Top Paid Downloads (NOT highest grossing)”

Marcus,

Thanks for this. Vaguely interesting. Would be good to see back to release date.

[Marcus Moore] “If top rank has any correlation with the number of sales (which I can only assume it must) …”

Actually we have no idea what the charts of the App Store mean. Apple makes no claims nor provides any information on what they represent.

Franz.