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Hi Sandee,
Adobe announced this a couple weeks back. Adobe announced they would be participating through sessions at the conference.
The news from today is that Apple will not participate in MacWorld after this year and that Steve Jobs is not delivering the keynote.
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/12/16macworld.html
This really is sad news. The rumors are that Steve isn’t presenting the keynote because of health issues. I really hope that isn’t the case.
I agree, it’s sad. I have been to many MacWorlds over the years including January 2008 and always enjoyed them!
Slow sales of CS4… gee, I wonder what might’ve caused that. Inflation/global economic problems or their high prices?
This is almost like Sony complaining sales for their Playstation 3 aren’t what they’d hoped, yet they’re the main reason sales are bad.
The economic issues aside, Adobe has been looking to move away from live trade show events for some time now. As are many big companies. But specifically with regard to Apple and Adobe, these were companies that spent A TON of money on these events, with not much upside. You have to figure almost everyone who comes to a Macworld already owns Adobe software and also owns a Mac. And it’s true that Apple has reached a point with their retail stores that because of the iPhone and iPod, they have Windows users coming in all the time. From Adobe’s perspective, remember that Adobe had their massive MAX conference in SF just a few weeks ago — and they had 5,000 hard core Adobe fans there. There isn’t much to gain from being at Macworld.
I don’t think slow sales has much to do with this particular decision — even if CS4 would be selling GREAT, Adobe would still have minimal participation in Macworld.
I tend to believe that one factor in slow sales of CS4 is that it’s too stinkin’ soon after CS3. I used to be a “buy on the first day it’s out” guy, but not any more.
Adobe has had a release schedule like this for a while and most of us have happily followed along. But when you combine that with the economic situation, I’m not shocked about slow sales. Personally, no clients are demanding things that I can’t do with CS3.
I appreciate (and look forward to using) some of the new features in CS4. There’s some cool stuff in there. But to some degree, the Suite is getting somewhat like Office… already solid in performing its core tasks and harder to justify an upgrade each time when the updates come so (relatively) quickly.
I agree whole heartedly with Mike! CS is the backbone of all my work but buying a new Porsche every 18 months just isn’t in my budget…or my boss’s.
I agree with Mike and Jennie. I can’t afford CS (retail or student copy) for home, and my company can’t afford to upgrade around 8 of us here each year a new version comes out.
We skipped went from CS1 to CS3, skipping CS2. We’ll probably skip CS4 and go to CS5, provided the economy picks up.
As a small reseller, I will give you one reason sales of CS4 are slow: the reseller margin is about 2%. For example, if I sell an upgrade to CS4 Design Standard at retail price, I make $10.35. I can not stock, no less advertise these products for that. In fact, if we have to “sell” the upgrade, and it takes 15 minutes… I’m losing money.
Consequently, we don’t stock (or promote) Adobe products anymore. I can’t take the risk. If somebody requests one, we order a copy for them. Adobe has essentially changed us from ‘consultants’ into ‘catalog stores’ and even that is not sustainable.
FWIW, these margins didn’t begin with the release of CS4. They changed sometime toward the end of CS3. A customer called to upgrade a copy of InDesign a couple months ago and I was stunned to see that my margin was less than $2.00. Why should I bother?
I’ve talked to Adobe reseller reps and to our distributors about it. Everybody agrees that it makes no sense for a reseller to sell Adobe products. Why they express surprise at slow sales is the real mystery.
The CS schedule is very short. The apps prices are too high ? or plainly absurd if you took prices outside US. CS4 apps become huge and this is the most buggy version in the whole CS series.
Adobe marketing is focusing more and more on Acrobat and office-like customers. Designers became a secondary revenue origin.
So add this scenario to economical crisis and very low reseller margins. A recipe for disaster.
I suppose CS5 will not be available from 18 months after CS4. Hope this happens: a more relaxed schedule would be good for everyone.
The larger story is that not only is Jobs not presenting at this Keynote, but Apple has announced they are backing out of MacWorld altogether after 2009. This has to do with the timing of the keynotes and Apple not wanting to announce partial releases or boring keynotes on MacWorld’s schedule. They want to schedule their own keynote speeches on their timeline, not MacWorlds and suffer because of it.
This has nothing to do with Steve’s health. This could be the end of MacWorld though, without an Apple keynote speech and announcements of new products, etc. many may be turned off…
I want to weigh in against those who find an 18-month upgrade cycle is too frequent. I’d find a 12-month cycle to be too frequent, but a 24-month one to be too long a wait — like we had to endure between CS2 and CS3 — hence the 18-month one is spot-on. This is the software & computing field we’re talking about, folks, where two years is a minor aeon!
And since everyone is perfectly free to both wait longer before they upgrade and to skip a version or two, why gripe? Or rather, why should those who gripe about the 18-months cycle prevent us “frequent flyer” folks from flying on that schedule?
> And since everyone is perfectly free to both wait longer before they upgrade and to skip a version or two, why gripe?
Uh… because griping is one of the main purposes of the Internet. Didn’t you get the memo? ;)
Other than that…
I doubt Adobe would prefer people skip a version or two. That’s not why you go through the effort and expense to create and release such complex software (and put together all the marketing that goes with it)… to see your target audience say “No thanks this time around. We’ll catch you again in 18 months.”
Personally, I think the quality of some of the CS products has slipped a bit. I attribute part of that to the release schedule that pushes too many of the individual programs too fast so that they can be released together as part of the Suite. Another six months in development and testing wouldn’t hurt.
Aside from the economic and technical reasons; Adobe has probably a lack of understanding what counts as a ‘reasonable’ price, the world outside the US pays sometimes twice as much, it could be a main factor in sales figures.
In our company most files we get are made in CS2, we work in CS3, and we waited a while to buy CS3, I agree with people who say that Adobe went too fast. Also perhaps there was a transition between CS2 and CS3 that a lot of companies went to Intel-Macs?
As a design student, having a college that can afford the new CS products is fantastic. But when it’s time to go home, its hard to keep up the same work schedule.’
As far as economical things, I would say that Adobe has made some attempts at catering to the majority of people by offering full versions for the price of upgrades (well not entirely, but it was something along those lines. i don’t remember the specifics.. just that fact that I missed the sale. :( )
I do a lot of work with licensing contractors and most of the logo files that I receive are created and updated in CS1…. My point with this is that I am glade that Adobe didn’t pull a REALLY mean card and make the different file versions incompatible with each other.
Now that WOULD be bad. For everyone.
Best article about Apple pulling out of Macworld that I’ve read so far. Yay, Tonya!