[Locked] No perpetual licenses are you serious?

Report · May 06, 2013

I just head that Adobe was planning to abandon its perpetual license in favor of an on line only rental program. At first I thought that this must be a joke. I have been using adobe products for 18 years. Primarily Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign. I am currently an owner of CS 6 Master collection and obviously do upgrade my products and have consistently done so over the years. I am not connected to the internet full time and in fact my work computer is never directly connected to the internet. So how does this work? Is adobe now forcing me to connect to the internet - it seems that this is the case.

In regards to upgrade cycles, I dont want to rent my software and be tied to a rental agreement. I want to upgrade when I choose, not rent my software like some kind of loaner program!

I want to purchase the software then not worry about it. For instance when I travel, I dont want to be bogged down with downloads and upgrades chewing up my bandwidth. I have traveled to many places where internet access is very limited. Downloading from a wireless card in China is painful, I dont want to be bogged down with no software or large megabyte downloads costing me a fortune on the other side of the planet.

Adobe I know that I am just one person and you will probably not listen to me but did someone ask? No one asked me about this. How simple could this be - I want to buy the software then use it when I want where I want, is this too much to ask?

Please let me continue to use this software in the way that I have used it for so long. If others wish to have the creative cloud then great! More power to them, don't alienate your other users. Please provide both alternatives.

Best regards - Matt

Report · Sep 16, 2013

Wallstreet is perfectly aware of what the cloudies refuse to see. Let me quote:

The move to Internet cloud software holds the promise of higher lifetime revenue per customer, as users switch to paying a monthly subscription fee rather than buying software products outright.

Source:

http://news.investors.com/technology/091613-671175-adobe-stock-reaches-new-high-before-q3-earnings.h...

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Andy Bay wrote:
Wallstreet is perfectly aware of what the cloudies refuse to see. Let me quote:
The move to Internet cloud software holds the promise of higher lifetime revenue per customer, as users switch to paying a monthly subscription fee rather than buying software products outright.
Source:
http://news.investors.com/technology/091613-671175-adobe-stock-reaches -new-high-before-q3-earnings....

Yeah. I personally wouldn't call it a "promise".

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Yeah. I personally wouldn't call it a "promise".

Neither would I.

The funny thing is also this: guess who is going to have to pay for the hundreds of thousands of lost Adobe customers? That's right, the ones who are still left. Cloud users should prepare mentally for some serious milking!

And they can't even blame Adobe for it. If you willingly position yourself as the (cash) cow, don't be surprised when you get milked!

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Can someone help me? I don't understand the Q3 earnings statement.

Adobe announced about 300 million dollar in revenue from subscriptions in Q3. Since they only stated one sum for subscriptions it must include Creative Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Adobe stated about 255 million revenue with Marketing Cloud. So this leaves only 45 million revenue for Creative Cloud. This means the average payment of a subscriber is less than $15 per month. Other countries pay more and even with the promo discounts the average monthly subscriber payment must be much higher. If I'm correct in my calculations they must have given away more than 300.000 subscriptions for free. Did I make a mistake?

Report · Sep 17, 2013

How many subscribers did you account for and where did you get the number?

Also, Is there a link to the earnings statement?

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Also did they disclose how many people were buying CS6 this last quarter? I bet a good portion of their earnings were coming from that.

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Their (difficult to read) business Papers can be found here:
http://www.adobe.com/investor-relations.html?promoid=JZEFZ

Have a look at Quick links to the left:

Q3 FY13 earnings press release

Q3 FY13 investor datasheet

Q3 FY13 earnings call script and slides

When I read it right, they earnd 3-times more from CS-licenses this year than from CashCow slavery fees (THey try to hide it). Even the so called "cloud" is so "overwhelming" in their CEOs mind. And even people like the CashCow "so much". And even the CS6 products are so antique. Even under the condition, that former users had to be in fear to lose their discounts at 1st September.

But they received a 5% plus at Wall Street with after hour trades.
Wonder if investors and analysts know, what´s going on here.

Wonder if they believe themselves to reach 4 Millions of Cloudies till 2015.

Report · Sep 17, 2013

I think I found the earnings report.

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/201309/Q313Earnings.pdf

But this was interesting.

"Our customers are overwhelmingly choosing subscriptions instead of perpetual model licenses which is accelerating our business model transition," said Mark Garrett, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Adobe. "During Q3, 41 percent of our revenue was recurring and we exited the quarter with record deferred revenue on our balance sheet. These results are buiding a stronger, more predictable revenue model for Adobe which will drive higher long-term growth"

Meanwhile they are selling subscriptions are reduced "introductory" rates. So the question will be if all the customers stick with them once the rates return to normal, or if customers will start dropping like flies. The other question will be when will they hit the saturation point and not gain significantly more customers, and will that be enough to sustain them.

It kind of doesn't matter how many subscriptions you sell this year if they are all at bargain introductory prices which will go up next year and possibly trigger a small exodus.

What is the size of Adobe's customer base using CS6 and CS5? Surely they have 5+ million users or more. Are they really willing to give up or scare off 4+ million of them in order to keep 1 million regular subscribers? Still seems stupid to me.

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Payed and installed CS users (Suites and Single Apps) are nearby 13 Million (see last quarter report).

They want to get 4 Million users to the cloud till 2015 (Rest can go elsewhere - Adobe needs them no longer).

They want to reach a raise of revenue with these 4 Million (for those, who believe, something is getting cheaper in future)

Report · Sep 17, 2013

If you assume an average of $600 per subscription (single products and ETLAs lower the average, team increases it, no promos anymore) Adobe would need need more than 5.5 million subscribers just to make the same revenue with CC as with CS in 2015. This system will fail big or the subscription fees will increase significantly. The future will tell.

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Their last quarter results were called very minimalistic and not readable, this one is also.

But right: If they want to make the same revenue, they have to catch much more than the planed 4 Millions without raising the fees.

And the income today is made with discount prices.

Wonder if all the today clud users will or can pay their fees tomorrow.

Time will tell.

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Can someone help me? I don't understand the Q3 earnings statement.
Adobe announced about 300 million dollar in revenue from subscriptions in Q3. Since they only stated one sum for subscriptions it must include Creative Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Adobe stated about 255 million revenue with Marketing Cloud. So this leaves only 45 million revenue for Creative Cloud. This means the average payment of a subscriber is less than $15 per month. Other countries pay more and even with the promo discounts the average monthly subscriber payment must be much higher. If I'm correct in my calculations they must have given away more than 300.000 subscriptions for free. Did I make a mistake?

Not sure but I'm seeing a creative ARR of 546 million for Q3. The formula for that is [(# of Total Active Creative Cloud Subscriptions) x (Average Revenue Per Subscription Per Month) x 12] + [Annual Creative ETLA Contract Value]

With million subscribers that makes 546/12=45 $ but that number includes also "Annual Creative ETLA Contract Value" which is distorting the result. Adobe doesn't seem eager to release the average subscription price to the public, that's for sure.

Report · Sep 17, 2013

Andy Bay schrieb:
Can someone help me? I don't understand the Q3 earnings statement.
Adobe announced about 300 million dollar in revenue from subscriptions in Q3. Since they only stated one sum for subscriptions it must include Creative Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Adobe stated about 255 million revenue with Marketing Cloud. So this leaves only 45 million revenue for Creative Cloud. This means the average payment of a subscriber is less than $15 per month. Other countries pay more and even with the promo discounts the average monthly subscriber payment must be much higher. If I'm correct in my calculations they must have given away more than 300.000 subscriptions for free. Did I make a mistake?
Not sure but I'm seeing a creative ARR of 546 million for Q3. The formula for that is [(# of Total Active Creative Cloud Subscriptions) x (Average Revenue Per Subscription Per Month) x 12] + [Annual Creative ETLA Contract Value]
With million subscribers that makes 546/12=45 $ but that number includes also "Annual Creative ETLA Contract Value" which is distorting the result. Adobe doesn't seem eager to release the average subscription price to the public, that's for sure.

I found this, too, in the meanwhile. This makes more sense, but then I don't understand the Earnings Statement. There subscription revenue for Q3 is stated as 299 million. In the highlights text at the beginning of that statement Adobe states the Q3 earnings for Marketing Cloud as 255 millions. I thought Marketing Clous is subscription only. Maybe this is my mistake. This is how I ended up with 45 million revenue for CC in Q3.

Report · Sep 23, 2013

The Adobe Cloud home page is stating 'One million members, One million thank you's'

http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/creativecloud.html

Report · Sep 23, 2013

...but not "Our other 12,8 Million users just don´t want this"

(They were just able, to bring one Mill. of a total 13.5 users into their cloud-jail within more than two years. By doing all they can: Killing the cloud as a option, Giving discounts & sending all their sales guys to enterprise clients. Do you (really) want to call this success (of evil)?)

Report · Sep 23, 2013

When I read through all the horrible posts of the cloud disscusions:
Isn´t this site the best argument against the CashCow???

Report · Sep 23, 2013

About that 1 million members... Some may be like me: I tend to try stuff, to find out if it works. I'm almost ashamed to admit it now, but I gave it a chance. CC messes with my operating system in a way that only Microsoft can equal. It also f***ed up part of my CS6 software. The new "equivalent" could not complete the command that used to work flawlessly in CS6. After the new SW rendered the old one useless without being able to deliver on its own, I tried to reinstall my CS6 from the distribution media. It just wouldn't install anymore. I was appalled. I went searching for a solution on Adobe's site and found none. It took me two days to find a solution on my own. Now that my (dearly paid) CS6 install is operational again, I have learned a valuable lesson: with the new model, we'll never have a fallback position again. So, about this 1 million, it's actually 1 million minus one now. I'm getting out while I can.

Report · Sep 23, 2013

I will be out too in a couple of months when my subscriptions ends and I will have to pay way to much. I have only Lightroom from Adobe from earlier and I therefore don't have the option for Photoshop and Ligthroom. So I will be looking elsewhere.

I believe in two things.

1. Number of subscriptions will fall when the first year of trials is over and payment will raise.

2. They don't have a million subscribers, it is rounded up a lot from the marketing people. And who can control Adobe?

We have learned that Adobe cannot be trusted and I don't trust them on this either.

Report · Oct 04, 2013

Today, I feel sorry for all those who are wondering if their credit card info was stolen from Adobe's server. I've been there (stolen at a gas pump), and it's not fun.

What really bothers me here is that Adobe didn't know they were hacked until they found their source code on the Internet. It's bad enough to make your customers vulnerable this way, but how does a large entity like Adobe not know they were hacked?

From a hacker's perspective, security is there to be breached. This is one of the several reasons I will not participate in their move to the cloud.

Good luck to everyone with compromised personal info. I hope the bad guys didn't get cash out of your bank account like they did mine.

Report · Oct 04, 2013

Luckily I have a good Credit Card company and they will be monitoring any odd transactions. If it does happen we will disput and a new CC will be issued overnight. This is terrible that it has happened. I wish, personally, that I did not have to rent but instead just outright buy from a place like Amazon. I'm reviewing my options to go back to CS6 asap. Luckily I do not record 4K or need the new options in Photoshop, so that is a plus. And After Effects is just as good in CS6 as CC.

Report · Oct 04, 2013

I'm still on boxed version and feel very happy. Bought it 3 years ago and haven't spend a single cent since then. CC is the ultimate prison....

Report · Oct 04, 2013

Adobe Customer Survey. If you are not happy with CC being the only choice, let them know. http://deploy.ztelligence.com/start/survey/survey_taking.jsp?PIN=16BNF7XXXKLNX …

Report · Oct 04, 2013

FrannieKN wrote:
Today, I feel sorry for all those who are wondering if their credit card info was stolen from Adobe's server. I've been there (stolen at a gas pump), and it's not fun.
What really bothers me here is that Adobe didn't know they were hacked until they found their source code on the Internet. It's bad enough to make your customers vulnerable this way, but how does a large entity like Adobe not know they were hacked?
From a hacker's perspective, security is there to be breached. This is one of the several reasons I will not participate in their move to the cloud.
Good luck to everyone with compromised personal info. I hope the bad guys didn't get cash out of your bank account like they did mine.

That's a huge reason not to move to CC. Between the CC disaster and now the Adobe hacking is anyone actually in charge at Adobe these days?

I had to laugh when I tried to sign in to this forum today and saw -To protect the security and integrity of your account, we have reset your password - Adobe should have protected the security and integrity of our accounts before.

CC - Never. Never. Never. I don't trust Adobe.

Report · Oct 04, 2013

I love how they knew about this 2 weeks ago and said nothing. Millions of customers personal information was at risk and they said nothing. Adobe has become the Satan of the software industry in less than a year.

Report · Oct 04, 2013

You're right Danny. They have done pretty much everything wrong in the last year. I just can't justify giving a company, so poorly operated, my future business.

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[Locked] No perpetual licenses are you serious?