[Herb Sevush] "you seem to know what your talking about"
I know plenty. I also know I'm wrong on a regular basis. :-)
[Herb Sevush] "assuming 10% of FCP users would never have bought a Mac except for FCP, and figuring an average expenditure of $4000 per user"
Let's say you're low, and the number should be $500 million for new computer sales to Pro Apps customers -- that's still ONE TENTH of the revenue that Pro Apps software alone has generated!
There's just not any question in my mind that Pro Apps is a software business. In the math we're using here, the score is Software: 90%, Hardware: 10%.
I still think it's closer to $200 million in "manufactured out of thin air, never woulda bought a Mac" sales tops. I can go into detail if you think it's interesting, but short version is that I think the majority of the new pro customers are disaffected Avid, Premiere and Media 100 users -- and in the case of the first two, the Mac user base of those was in the majority, and rabidly Mac. The other big driver is students, who are already so Mac-oriented that they're changing curricula just by showing up with Macs already in hand.
Anyway, I could be full of it, but that's my thinking. And again, even if it's as high as $1 billion in new computer sales, that's still only 20% of the software business.
[Herb Sevush] "Avid isn't interested in anyone smaller than NBC."
This is the thrust of their "New Thinking" campaign. It's not that new, actually -- outreach to indies is among the things they hired me for back in the day. They'll be the first to admit that Media 100 was the one that kicked the door down for them back in 1997 or so, but they really have understood this for a while.
Making the full, unrestricted version of Media Composer available for $2495 is rock-solid evidence that they're widening their message -- money talks. :-)
Tim Wilson
Associate Director, CreativeCow.net
Associate Publisher,
Creative Cow Magazine!
