For Craig Seeman: Avid sells of consumer line

[Craig Seeman]

You beat me to it. 😉
Supposedly the consumer line was dragging them down. It’ll be interesting to see if they follow with other moves.

I still think MC and Symphony will be consolidated but I suspect people will be happy with that in the long urn if it happens.

Odd maybe but I’m bothered that they’re selling Avid for iPad to Corel. I thought that app was a good idea just as I though the Avid Free was some years back. The idea of getting people in on the bottom and getting them brand loyal is important much as Apple does with iMovie or did with Final Cut Express. Also I can’t imagine Corel as company that’s going to give this app proper care and feeding.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “I still think MC and Symphony will be consolidated but I suspect people will be happy with that in the long urn if it happens.”

Seems long overdue to me.

[Lance Bachelder]

Talk about a fire sale – $17 million for two divisions? Avid paid over $150 million for M-Audio back in 2004…yikes!

Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Irvine, California

[Andrew Kimery]

[Craig Seeman] “Odd maybe but I’m bothered that they’re selling Avid for iPad to Corel. I thought that app was a good idea just as I though the Avid Free was some years back. The idea of getting people in on the bottom and getting them brand loyal is important much as Apple does with iMovie or did with Final Cut Express. Also I can’t imagine Corel as company that’s going to give this app proper care and feeding.”
Since the iPad app only worked w/Avid Studio Products it makes sense. I bet Avid is working on a new iPad app that will a companion to MC/Symphony.

[Craig Seeman]

[Lance Bachelder] “Talk about a fire sale – $17 million for two divisions? Avid paid over $150 million for M-Audio back in 2004…yikes!”

Seems like it was a dump and run sale. In other words owning and maintaining the product line was costing them more than simply getting rid of it.

I use M-Audio BX5a monitors for my level of work (corporate, local cable spots, vnr, otherwise I’d be using Genelecs. I believe for a time some people got Avid systems from VARs with M-Audio speakers if I’m not mistaken. In any case I think this is a good move on Avid’s part. Given the fire sale price, it was probably a real drag on the company.

[Craig Seeman]

[Andrew Kimery] “I bet Avid is working on a new iPad app that will a companion to MC/Symphony.”

That would be smart. They really need something to bring people into the product line, Also a good app could be ENG worthy . . . given I’m seeing a niche (small so far) for iPad ENG shooting, editing, delivery.

[Gary Hazen]

[Craig Seeman] “I thought that app was a good idea just as I though the Avid Free was some years back.”

Avid Free was terrible. Buggy, never worked right. Just a bad idea. You invite people to try out your product with a free version and they are left with the impression that you make bad products. It probably did more harm to the company than good.

Regarding the selling off of the consumer line I think this is a positive move on Avid’s part. Their product line up is too cluttered, this is a step in the right direction.

[Gary Huff]

[Craig Seeman] “given I’m seeing a niche (small so far) for iPad ENG shooting, editing, delivery.”

I definitely think there’s some kind of market for that. News stations are airing a lot of YouTube material, and the iPad can generate better quality than that.

[Craig Seeman]

[Gary Hazen] “Avid Free was terrible. Buggy, never worked right. Just a bad idea. “

It was a good idea, done badly. Rather than improve it they abandoned it. That was a bad idea.

[Tim Wilson]

Avid also bought Pinnacle for $425-ish million. A lot of that was in stock, and certainly much of the value was for broadcast graphics, servers, etc. — but it’s also not like $91 million in revenue for their computer graphics is anything to sneeze at.

Of course, we don’t know the extent to which consumer stuff was actually turning a profit for them. Once they get rid of the sales, support, R&D, development and manufacturing costs for those products, the $17 million might just be positive-cashflow gravy on top of stopping the bleeding.

I think it drives home that they understand that they need focus more than anything else. Well, that and making more than they spend. This could be a potential step toward both.

There’s no consolidating MC and Symphony. It’s one or the other. It would be a matter of killing the Media Composer brand and calling it all Symphony, or killing the Symphony brand and making it all Media Composer. They’re surely using the recent Symphony sale to re-evaluate this, but I suspect that they saw that Symphony still has upsell value for both hardware and software — which is to say that both brands are still valuable in unique ways. CAR ANALOGIES SUCK, but I see that most mfrs still see some value to product line differentiation…..

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

The typos here are most likely because I’m, a) typing this on my phone; and b) an idiot.

Tim Wilson
Vice President, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou

The typos here are most likely because I’m, a) typing this on my phone; and b) an idiot.