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OT: Are We Finally Seeing the End of Avid?
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That is exactly the point where I got out of the Avid sales business. When Avid workstations dropped from 50k to even 100k to a lot fewer sales, period. At least in a rather small market like Hawaii, but which supports a lot of production because of its uniqueness. FCP Legacy was the cause, and I decided it was time to get out of sales (exclusive Avid in Hawaii) and back into production. If Avid can figure out a way to make money on the high end of the market (really just 2%?) they will survive. If not, get prepared for a takeover and paying a lot more for Avid systems in the future. Really don’t know how they pull that one off other than a big company willing to come in and take losses for a while. I certainly see the need for large shared projects editing with relatively big budgets, so I hope it works out. If Avid doesn’t do it, someone will. If their management is as poor as it seems, it may say Avid on the box, a division of…
Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD, Multiple OWC Thunderbay 4 TB2 and eSATA QX2 RAID 5 HD systems -
I work for a national news network out of DC and virtually all in house edit suites are AVID….using it’s servers here, in NY and LA. That said, the engineering folks realize that editing is now portable and everywhere and they’re looking at other solutions including Premiere Pro and FCP X……some producers and reporters already using both in the field where interfacing with the server is less of an issue, as they’re sending completed, sometimes rough cuts over IP to air or finish
Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852 -
[Jim Wiseman] ” If Avid can figure out a way to make money on the high end of the market (really just 2%?) they will survive.”
I don’t think anyone can say for sure, but it can’t be tons bigger than that.
Remember when Apple’s stock was in single digits? It stayed in single digits for almost all of 2003. It started picking up with iPod in 2004, then REALLY took off with iTunes for Windows, meaning that virtually the whole world could buy an iPod. Check the chart history some time. It really was nearly to the day.
Part of the reason their stock price was in the single digits is because so was their market share. People had been talking about Apple going out of business for the last ten years, too.
Me and 1000 of my closest buddies were in a keynote address and saw Steve Jobs say, paraphrasing, “Yes, our market share is 3%. But BMW’s market share is also 3%, and nobody’s talking about BMW going out of business.”
He went on to say that that’s how Apple saw themselves. Not the top of the market, but definitely a luxury brand that had found its niche, and it wasn’t going away. You can make a lot of money in a niche.
He was of course correct. Plenty of other folks on this thread have made the point that Avid’s market share in its key niche is going UP. Not going down. Going UP. Their niche is feeling well-served by Avid, and not well-enough served by others.
(Although seconding Andrew’s observation, it looks to me like Premiere is the only one besides Avid gaining any ground…but I think it’s vastly more at Apple’s expense as people look for more modern alternatives and find Premiere looking a lot more like Legend 8 than X does.)
Also seconding Oliver’s observation that while Avid is growing its market share in its key niche, the question remains whether they can make more than they spend, and ENOUGH more than they spend that their PROFIT can expand in a way that matches their growth in market share.
Apple survived after a non-stop decade of people certain they’d go out of business…and has managed to do okay in the decade since they turned the corner. I doubt that Avid has the equivalent of an iPod waiting in the wings, but then again, neither does BMW, and they seem to be in it for the long haul.
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[Neil Goodman] “This is a ridiculous statement.”
LOL… oh really? Because you work at the same schools and studios? Because I otherwise have no clue how you could make such a ridiculous statement. But I guess it’s simply not true because you don’t want it to be true. The only possible conclusion one could come to, with such a completely baseless insinuation.
– RK
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Deutsch? Hier gibt es ein umfassendes FCP X Training für dich! -
[Tim Wilson] “Plenty of other folks on this thread have made the point that Avid’s market share in its key niche is going UP. Not going down. Going UP.”
How is this quantified?
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
Apple became a luxury item to the wider consumer market as part of its extraordinary growth in a separate, but somewhat related market – music players and phones. Avid has tried twice to enter consumer markets, maybe three if you count the short-lived iPad editing solution before it sold off to Corel. It became clear that the Avid brand at the high end (Hollywood) had no impact when marketing to the consumer market. The whole “home to Hollywood” did not pay off.
But the “video” market has grown since those days to the current “video is everywhere” it whatever forms it takes from mobile to streaming. The issue is that Avid’s revenue have not grown along with it and other solutions are filling that gap. Avid continues to serve its existing customer base well, all the ones mentioned here, broadcast, news, studio film/television and Reality – and as noted, any situation that requires multiple editors, assistants, and collaborators to share the program creation process.
Perhaps the 12,000 subscriptions mentioned in the earnings call is telling for those “other” markets. That is the total number of subscribers in the past 18 months. What is not known is whether that is the total current ACTIVE subscribers or anyone who may have subscribed for at least a month. It would be interesting to see how that breaks down. If I recall correctly, 7 month to month rentals was the same as a yearly commit. How many month to month, versus yearly?
I feel that last year’s December 31 deadline to get on the support plan or pay for your license all over again should you want to upgrade was a “gentle” force to get more money out of the existing user base. There were thousands of systems humming away on v5, 5.5, 6, 6.5 and 7 – especially in those large collaborative environments as the cost of the upgrade is more than just the seats – but the entire environment.
As I mentioned, the Avid challenge is to get more money from the customer base – this is the whole Avid Marketplace concept to become an “Apple Store” selling goods and services for a cut of the revenue. This is highly dependent on having lots of seats to target and getting lots of developers to get on board making purchases form the Marketplace more appealing than any other alternative. I think Pro Tools has a lot better shot as it has always been considered a platform for third party development and one can easily argue that its plug-in architecture is better, easier, with more performance than other formats so developers are more than glad to get on board. Media Composer on the other hand is a snooze fest when it comes to plethora of choices and price points, and AVX is not a popular plug-in architecture and is only used in Media Composer, arguably the smallest of the seat count market.
The other challenge is growing the number of seats, and that means competing with Resolve, Adobe and FCPx to feed that Marketplace. And that is a huge challenge. I believe the CEO mentioned (again) in this earnings call that they will start aggressively marketing into this “tier 3” market. Perhaps that will make its debut with Media Composer|Free.
Michael
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[Robin S. Kurz] “Personally, I already dared predict their demise within about two years tops a couple of years back”
Like predictions, Robbie? Here’s one; Media Composer will outlive FCPX by many, many years. FCPX is going to be replaced by FCPVR -or something to that effect- and the old fart Media Composer will be here! And do you know what I also dare to say? MC will probably be here when the next FCPVR is EOL’d as well. Maybe not as Avid’s, I grant you that. But it will be funny to watch, I mean all FCPX users being stuck with the latest ‘good’ release, in the exact same sense that FCP7 users were back in the day. Only then FCPX users will understand how it feels to be tied to a workflow and talent pool like FCP Studio users were – and many still are today.
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[Michael Phillips] “The other challenge is growing the number of seats, and that means competing with Resolve, Adobe and FCPx to feed that Marketplace. And that is a huge challenge.”
I agree with this. In my market AVID is in the same facilities that it has been in for years, but the three newest facilities went with Pr
They have not been able to expand their base here.
Anybody that has worked in this biz for more than 20 years knows the trend has been to go smaller and smaller. That means fewer and fewer people. As in, one person do EVERYTHING so we don’t have to pay any workers.
The question is, will this trend continue (I think we all know the answer) and if it does what will editing look like.
AVID works great in a shared environment but who will you share with when there are just a hand full of people left at the station.
The last baseball game I worked, out of the 3 laptops running in the truck, 2 were X and one Legend.
AVID has got to find a way into this current trend of cut on the run, individual/smaller market place.
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[Tony West] “Anybody that has worked in this biz for more than 20 years knows the trend has been to go smaller and smaller. That means fewer and fewer people. As in, one person do EVERYTHING so we don’t have to pay any workers.
“I think this all depends on the type of work you do.
Yes budgets have gotten smaller, editorial teams have shrunk – but Ive never been asked to do anything other than edit picture, and do basic sound design and audio mix.
dedicated GFX and Audio and finishing teams are still very much a thing out here, and I don’t see that changing out here anytime soon for broadcast work.
If I do ever get approached to do my own final GFX and Audio, then the rate goes up.. way up!
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What’s the trend there at your place Neil? Are they expanding editing jobs there? Maintaining the same or cutting?
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