Re: So if Avid goes under, then what?

[Walter Soyka] "Avid is also marketing a value-added product line -- it's just that almost none of us here are their target audience. MC is really only a fraction of what Avid does. Why should they bend over backwards to chase Apple and Adobe for low-margin, lone-gunman desktop editorial when they can practically own both the hardware and software sides of collaborative editorial?"

I agree with this generally but Avid doesn't have a clear business model. The whole crossgrade lost them money. Why bother with it if it's not a viable model? These are the serious mistakes they keep making. MC/Symphony should really just be the NLE tool that goes with Unity/Isis system sales. They may want a wider base if they feel that the more people are comfortable with the NLE the more likely they'll buy Unity/Isis.

If people are buying MC/Symphony and going with other storage solutions, that's not serving Avid's financials. That people are finding other viable storage options with Avid's "front end" NLEs, that indicates a problem (IMHO) also.

The question is, as Adobe and Apple progress, to what extent that might hurt Avid in the future as such users are not going to be buying Unity/Isis . . . or they'd be using MC/Symphony.

One (partial) solution, may be to tied MC/Symphony more closely to Unity/Isis in some fashion. The problem is, they're doing what they're currently doing and they keep losing quarter after quarter. Imagine 22 quarters and they still haven't figured out which way is up. They keep shedding employees as their primary solution. This time they shed product lines as part of it. That may not be a bad thing but it doesn't address the fundamental business model that needs to change.