Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 9   Go Down

Author Topic: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?  (Read 56514 times)

designpartners

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 98
    • Design Partners
Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« on: July 29, 2013, 05:24:37 pm »

any update on this? it's been 2 months..
http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/creative-cloud-were-listening.html

I haven't seen much since and I'm trying to put in place a budget for the coming year..

Thanks

James
Logged

Rick Popham

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 198
    • http://
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2013, 07:03:34 pm »

Still "listening", apparently.  I'd think they would have had an earful by now, and frankly the same sort of comments have been flying around since CC was announced last year, so this can't have been unexpected. 

The introductory pricing has been extended to August 31, 2013, so you have an extra month for that, if you're interested. 

I use PS CS6 Standard, so the introductory cost for Photoshop CC alone is about the same as I've been paying for my normal upgrades.  But after a year, the price doubles.  And if I stop paying, I lose access to the program and have to revert back to what I have now.  It really doesn't make much sense for me to subscribe.  Given that I would already have upgraded to CS7 if I could have, the Cloud is saving me money!
Logged

BernardLanguillier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13983
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlanguillier/sets/
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2013, 07:38:19 pm »

I have browsed though the article and also read random comments below it.

Very few of the comments left are positive.

I wonder if all the guys who left negative comments "dislike Adobe" for some strange reason... or whether they are just formerly happy customers who do not like the direction the company has recently been taking?

Most evidence point to the latter I would think.

Cheers,
Bernard

Eric Myrvaagnes

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 22814
  • http://myrvaagnes.com
    • http://myrvaagnes.com
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2013, 12:26:17 am »

Most evidence point to the latter I would think.

Cheers,
Bernard

I suspect strongly that you are right.

Eric M.
Logged
-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)

designpartners

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 98
    • Design Partners
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2013, 03:43:20 am »

so I suppose not really listening at all then...
hmmmmmm.

Thanks

James
Logged

john beardsworth

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4755
    • My photography site
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2013, 04:36:19 am »

Or just waiting to see who blinks first?

One interesting move is the year's CC subscription for all Photoshop World attendees. Apparently it's a life subscription if you're seen laughing at Scott's jokes.

John
« Last Edit: July 30, 2013, 10:48:36 am by johnbeardy »
Logged

daws

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 282
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2013, 12:56:18 pm »

any update on this? it's been 2 months..
http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2013/05/creative-cloud-were-listening.html...

One of the more interesting comments was posted last week:

Quote
Sam Lightman says:

Listen up, kiddies, here’s the real skinny on CC. When you want to find out what a company is really thinking, as opposed to what it’s telling its customers, go to its investor relations site. Specifically, if you go to this link:

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/ADBE-IR-Presentation-June%202013.pdf

You will discover that so-called @home/individuals compose 50% of its customer base but only – wait for it – 10% of its revenue base. The rest is corporate or institutional. So if they dispense with us @home/individuals, they eliminate a ton of support expenses and sales costs at a cost of only 10% of their revenue. So this is what they are doing; they are throwing us under the bus and assuming that the shortfall will be more than made up by the increases in revenue from the remaining subscribers, most of whom are corporate and can pay the license fees indefinitely, no matter how high they rise in the future.

So every time one of us screams, NO WAY am I gonna rent my software, etc., Adobe breathes a silent Amen, scratches another @home/individual off its list and focuses its efforts more tightly where the money is.

So…don’t expect Adobe to listen to our software-rental beefs with much interest. We are not where the money is. The company is perfectly okay with us going elsewhere.

It’s a new world, folks. Corporations rule, customers are dispensable, and individuals are really just road kill on the highway to higher profits.
Logged

designpartners

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 98
    • Design Partners
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #7 on: July 30, 2013, 04:38:58 pm »

One of the more interesting comments was posted last week:

One of the more interesting comments was posted last week:


I hadn't seen that, but we actually are a company.. not a huge number of licenses, we would probably buy 40 right now if we could.. but currently we have I think 27 ish..

I posed on another post..  http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=78151.msg627986#msg627986

_______________________

"in general, we've upgraded every 2 releases. we certainly see the advantage of upgrades, but we have to balance costs.

so.. the last time we upgraded from CS 3 to CS5, I think it cost us about €15k (it may have been €18k I can't remember)  -so annualized, it's maybe 5-6k.. a very manageable amount of money.

the thing is, almost none of us use just 1 program, a lot of us use PS, AI and ID on a daily basis. design standard was the ideal package for the majority of us, and we expanded where needed.

I certainly understand the benefit of the full master suite - I'd love to have it.. but.. not everyone in our team need it.. you can buy the individual licences but, it's not really viable to do it for 3 individual licenses per user.

quickly doing the math - even just for 25 CC licences (which isn't enough for us) - €61 per user per month, that's 61*12*25  - that comes to €18k per year! 

now to make things worse, instead of getting a discount for buying 25 licenses, they introduce "teams"... so instead of paying €61 per month, it's €86!!!  so that's 86*12*25 - that's almost €26,000 per year!!!
I like centrally managed licenses, I don't need 100gb of online storage.
 
so that goes from an annualized cost of €6k per year to €26k per year..

I know they have an introductory offer - I don't care about that.. that's only 1 year in what I hope is a long company future.

and we're growing.. increasing our number of users.. but at this price... well.. we will be looking long and hard at alternatives..

so I'd argue, Adobe hasn't got the first clue about the SME Pro market.. "

_________

huge price difference.. and that's just for 25 licenses.. I can't imagine the cost for large enterprises.. it must be unsustainable.. 
Logged

Jack Varney

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 413
    • http://
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #8 on: July 30, 2013, 10:22:38 pm »

Adobe is listening. They are listening to the clink of the coin of the realm into the corporate cash drawer coffers. That is their mission for the stock holders. The outcome for us will depend upon the curtailment of the clinking or its continuation.
Logged
Jack Varney

BernardLanguillier

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13983
    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernardlanguillier/sets/
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #9 on: July 30, 2013, 10:41:27 pm »

Adobe is listening. They are listening to the clink of the coin of the realm into the corporate cash drawer coffers. That is their mission for the stock holders. The outcome for us will depend upon the curtailment of the clinking or its continuation.

In fact this is a bit too simplified a view for a leading corporation like Adobe, and I am sure they know it full well.

There are many more things they need to be listening to in order to ensure continued success for their stockholders.

Those include user satisfaction, generic image of the company,...

Also, we should not forget that corporate clients of Adobe are run by people who have the potential to be individual customers and form their opinion about a B2B/B2C company like Adobe also from what they read on the web.

Cheers,
Bernard
« Last Edit: July 31, 2013, 12:20:52 am by BernardLanguillier »
Logged

Jack Varney

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 413
    • http://
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #10 on: July 31, 2013, 09:08:22 pm »

In fact this is a bit too simplified a view for a leading corporation like Adobe, and I am sure they know it full well.

There are many more things they need to be listening to in order to ensure continued success for their stockholders.

Those include user satisfaction, generic image of the company,...

Obviously there are many considerations that should be taken into account for Adobe's continued success. Not a few firms have failed to regard their customer's perception of them, failed to understand where their new customers come from, etc.

Could Adobe's strategy be successful enough in the short run to blind them of the future? Or, may they be taking the correct course with CC? Certainly it is important to keep them appraised of our, i.e. amateur and smaller pro operations, thoughts in the hope they will rethink the strategy. However, if enough  money flows, reverting to licensed packages will be a difficult decision.
Logged
Jack Varney

Dave (Isle of Skye)

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2514
  • I've even written a book about it
    • SkyePhotoGuide.com
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #11 on: August 01, 2013, 06:51:52 pm »

One of the more interesting comments was posted last week:

Quote
Sam Lightman says:

Listen up, kiddies, here’s the real skinny on CC. When you want to find out what a company is really thinking, as opposed to what it’s telling its customers, go to its investor relations site. Specifically, if you go to this link:

http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/ADBE-IR-Presentation-June%202013.pdf

You will discover that so-called @home/individuals compose 50% of its customer base but only – wait for it – 10% of its revenue base. The rest is corporate or institutional. So if they dispense with us @home/individuals, they eliminate a ton of support expenses and sales costs at a cost of only 10% of their revenue. So this is what they are doing; they are throwing us under the bus and assuming that the shortfall will be more than made up by the increases in revenue from the remaining subscribers, most of whom are corporate and can pay the license fees indefinitely, no matter how high they rise in the future.

So every time one of us screams, NO WAY am I gonna rent my software, etc., Adobe breathes a silent Amen, scratches another @home/individual off its list and focuses its efforts more tightly where the money is.

So…don’t expect Adobe to listen to our software-rental beefs with much interest. We are not where the money is. The company is perfectly okay with us going elsewhere.

It’s a new world, folks. Corporations rule, customers are dispensable, and individuals are really just road kill on the highway to higher profits.


I think that probably sums up the whole situation pretty well :(

Dave
Logged

jrp

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 322
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #12 on: August 03, 2013, 06:48:14 am »

That seems to be a fair analysis.  There was a conference call for analysts at the time that results went out where the CEO admitted that they were going to lose a huge chunk of their customers.  Since there must be some scale economies in this business, the overheads will be being spread over a smaller customer base, which means lower profits or increased prices.  Revenue per subscriber is the number that the analysts will be looking at.
Logged

Tim Lookingbill

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2436
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #13 on: August 03, 2013, 12:35:05 pm »

That seems to be a fair analysis.  There was a conference call for analysts at the time that results went out where the CEO admitted that they were going to lose a huge chunk of their customers.  Since there must be some scale economies in this business, the overheads will be being spread over a smaller customer base, which means lower profits or increased prices.  Revenue per subscriber is the number that the analysts will be looking at.

And how were you privy to this conference call for analysts, jrp? Do you have a link to a reliable source so we can all read it for ourselves?

You should hang out here more often, jrp. You're absence makes us wonder about you.

I mean where did all these people come from that responded ONLY to the CC subscription topic threads on this site and then just disappeared after the threads lost steam? Hard to believe they've only been lurkers all these years.
Logged

jrp

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 322
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #14 on: August 03, 2013, 02:41:35 pm »

The conference call for analyst transcripts are readily available direct from Adobe, NASDAQ, etc.

For example, here http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57589987-92/adobe-ceo-were-off-to-a-good-start-with-subscriptions-q-a/?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-BusinessTech you will find:

Quote
At your Max conference in May, you said you had an installed base of 10 million people. What fraction of them will go subscriptions?
 Narayen: We hope to see 4 million by 2015. We like to understand what it would take to attract more customers. Those are the public targets we set.
Logged

xpatUSA

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 390
    • Blog
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #15 on: August 03, 2013, 03:08:58 pm »

And how were you privy to this conference call for analysts, jrp? Do you have a link to a reliable source so we can all read it for ourselves?

You should hang out here more often, jrp. You're absence makes us wonder about you.

I mean where did all these people come from that responded ONLY to the CC subscription topic threads on this site and then just disappeared after the threads lost steam? Hard to believe they've only been lurkers all these years.

?
Logged
best regards,

Ted

john beardsworth

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4755
    • My photography site
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #16 on: August 03, 2013, 03:29:54 pm »

There was a conference call for analysts at the time that results went out where the CEO admitted that they were going to lose a huge chunk of their customers.
And how were you privy to this conference call for analysts, jrp? Do you have a link to a reliable source so we can all read it for ourselves?
I don't think Adobe's CEO actually says anywhere that they are deliberately losing a chunk of their customers. He talks about gaining new ones, and in that CNET interview the CEO says "We don't want to leave a single customer behind", presumably with a straight face. In published financial documents, Adobe talk in revenue terms - losing one revenue stream and replacing it with another. See their investor relations page and particularly the analysts briefing slides from slide 25 onwards. Some can infer that revenue means customers, but that's not much more than prejudice/anger speaking.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2013, 03:44:22 pm by johnbeardy »
Logged

Rhossydd

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3369
    • http://www.paulholman.com
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #17 on: August 03, 2013, 03:43:11 pm »

Some can infer that revenue means customers, but that's not much more than prejudice/anger speaking.
I don't think anyone here would think Adobe actively want to loose customers, the annoyance is that they don't care much that their policies will loose some. No one likes realising that their hard earnt money is unimportant to someone else.
Logged

john beardsworth

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4755
    • My photography site
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #18 on: August 03, 2013, 03:50:47 pm »

Quoted above from elsewhere - "So this is what they are doing; they are throwing us under the bus and assuming that the shortfall will be more than made up by the increases in revenue from the remaining subscribers, most of whom are corporate and can pay the license fees indefinitely, no matter how high they rise in the future."

Said by participants above: "I think that probably sums up the whole situation pretty well', "That seems to be a fair analysis."
Logged

Dave (Isle of Skye)

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2514
  • I've even written a book about it
    • SkyePhotoGuide.com
Re: Photoshop & Creative Cloud: We’re Listening?
« Reply #19 on: August 03, 2013, 06:41:31 pm »

Another downside to this besides all us photographer types being pushed under the wheels of the bus, is that if 50% of their customer base were home users and small businesses, then these were also probably the vast majority of the people who bought the books and videos and learning materials etc to learn how to use Adobe's products, because corporate users will have their own in-house training materials and trainers. So in effect Adobe are also throwing a lot of the third party and associated training businesses, authors, publishers and online training sites etc, etc, under the same bus.

But hey ho, it is their business and they can do with it as they please and push forward whatever ideas they want to push forward in the quest to maximise profits, even if it does mean lots of little people getting their fingers burnt – because as the old saying goes, business is business.

I just wonder if in the long run, it is going to be good business, having alienated so many people by doing this?

Dave

« Last Edit: August 03, 2013, 06:54:14 pm by Dave (Isle of Skye) »
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 9   Go Up