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Adobe Considers Withdrawing from Asian Markets
Max Groff writes "This brief ZDNet article (printer-friendly version) describes how Adobe is considering leaving its Asian markets due to the apparently high levels of piracy across the Pacific. This change would not only cut off the marketing of Adobe products to Asian markets, but also halt the development of much of the company's Asian-language software."
Korean version was produced (or planned) provided that a korean company would help in creating version plus guarantee certain number of sold copies; apparently (south-)Korea has similar problems but situation is perhaps not quite as bad.
I see a lot of posts here saying that this will not stop piracy of the Adobe's products, because it will eliminate the only legal way to obtain the software, so people will be forced to pirate it. Adobe knows that, but that's not the point. The point is that Adobe is actually spending money to support the Asian money, and that money is wasted.
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> So paying $5 for Adobe's products means you pay for the physical cost, even the distribution cost, but not for the labor cost.
To play Devil's Advocate, if you've got a pirated copy, you're not exactly consuming much in the way of support costs!
(Of course, that doesn't apply to the labor cost - the developers and QA people who built it, and that's probably a larger cost than the support costs.)
But to carry your argument one step further, suppose it's bad to pirate Photoshop 6.0, because you're not paying for the labor that went into 6.0.
What about 5.0, which isn't being offered for sale?
Or 4.0? 3.0?
Yes, I'm going down the slippery slope to abandonware -- at some point, the money that went to the developers ought to be "fully depreciated".
Consider - if you incur a capital expense to buy a new building, you get to write it off against income over the life of the building, say, 20 years. If you incur a capital expense to buy something like a computer, many jurisdictions allow you to write the cost of the computer off over a shorter timeframe, say, 5 years, because computers decline in value faster than buildings.
The money you pay a programmer to write software is an expense -- you "write it off" in the same year as you pay it out. If we think of it as another form of capital expenditure (intellectual capital; the brainpower of a developer), and we write it off in the same year, we're basically saying what the tech industry already knows -- software depreciates instantly ;-)
Paying $5 for a 2-year-old game in the "bargain bin" at your local retailer is legal. Why can't paying your friendly neighborhood pirate $5 for a 5-year-old game, or Photoshop 3.0, neither of which can be found even in bargain bins anymore, be legal?
As I said in an earlier message (which is playing hard to find), I knew someone from India living in the United States. He made minimum wage to make his way though college. His father was one of the top engineers in an Indian company. Guess who had the higher salary? My friend, not his father.
A $15,000 yearly salary in other countries is enough to make one live like a king. In India (I've been told; perhaps someone can comment), a $15,000 U.S.-equivalent salary is enough to have a personal cook prepare your lunch, and a personal servant bring it to your workplace.
$15,000 may seem like a lot to many students, but there are countries out there where people make $1.50 an hour or less. Companies make items abroad where it is cheaper yet attempt to sell said items abroad in the same countries at U.S. pricing.
Personally, I'm predicting a severe devaluation in the U.S. dollar to come sometime within the next century or so; one cannot price an item at price A in country X and price B in Y without a third party Z coming along and moving the item from A to B at a lower cost. Given that most other currencies are worth less than the United States', the dollar likely will be devalued as we start kicking and screaming and wondering why.
Any other company coming in will have exactly the same market Adobe has, and they will face the same problem.
Not necessarily. Depends on whether they're clever enough to find a way to adapt to the Asian market instead of throwing up their hands and running away.
When pirated copies of XENIX were running every bank in China, a SCO sales guy told me: "Trying to convince the Chinese not to pirate software is a waste of time--they'd just laugh. But they want to buy manuals, and the idea of paying for books is part of their culture. So let 'em copy the software if they want, but charge 'em for the doc, and you can make lots of money in China."
In most cases, a handshake means more than a contract. Contracts in china are worth S_ _T. The government isn't going to enforce a law the entire country percieves as stupid. The chinese culture believes in practicality and utility. Take the phrase "Kung-fu". It isn't just martial arts. The phrase is applied to anyone who has refined/exceptional skill and strong work ethic. A businessman can be said to have "kung-fu" in the art of negotiation. A teacher can have "kung-fu" in inspiring students.
Adobe needs to first learn about the culture and understand it before they try to dictate how chinese people should behave. Chinese are very proud of the culture, history and tradition. No self respecting chinese is going to roll over just because adobe says so.
Adobe wins because, as mentioned before, they save on development costs and don't lose much in sales anyway.
China wins because if they do want to use Adobe products (pirated or otherwise) they have to use the English version, and anything that reinforces the de facto standard of English in the IT world is a good thing. You'll understand if you ever have to deal with a mixed-language environment of Simplified Chinese (PRC), Traditional Chinese (Taiwan/HK) and English versions of software, none of which really "play nice" with each other.
Plus, it's especially hard to port technical documents to Chinese, which isn't an alphabet- or syllable-based language. So, to translate something technical, they have to either use homophones (Chinese characters that sound like their English equivalents, but mean something completely different), or string together two or more characters to create a very loose, easily misinterpreted translation.
Hey, working in China, I hope more companies follow Adobe's example... =)
Photoshop Elements != Photoshop. It's a severly GIMP'd version (all puns intended).
The GIMP is ok for making web graphics. You're never going to do any serious photo retouching, CMYK color correction, under color removal, trapping, or any other necessary pre-press operation with the GIMP, though. It just isn't ready to handle the complex, precise, and finicky nature of real four-color (or more) offset press preproduction work.
Does the GIMP have monitor color calibration? Does it have color profiles for myriad pre-press proofing machines and/or offset presses? Does it have Pantone (TM) licensed color libraries? Last time I checked it didn't.
Unless China only ever produces web sites I doubt the GIMP will be a 100% useable solution.
Corel could step in with Corel PhotoPaint. It's not as good as Photoshop for the items I mentioned above. but, it's worlds better at those chores than the GIMP is. It's still not a 100% solution, though, as I will explain below.
Assuming that since the GIMP is vaguely similar to Photoshop Elements it will be able to replace Photoshop is a very slanted view on the whole situation.
Even if the GIMP could do 100% of what Photoshop does that doesn't solve the problem of providing all of the functionality of all Adobe products to China. That is, unless the GIMP has gained the ability to do short document layout (Pagemaker), long document layout (InDesign), SGML based technical document publishing (Frame), vector illustration with 100% PS3 compatibility (Illustrator), motion graphics (After Effects), video editting (Premiere), web based vector animation (Live Motion), and PDF creation and editting (Acrobat series). That list isn't all inclusive, either.
Just like GIMP != Photoshop, Photoshop != All Adobe Products.
Here's a hint. Find an agent in China. Get him to print and box the documentation. Let him keep the a large share of the profits.
Over a decade ago, Autodesk faced the same problem. The English version of AutoCAD was #1 in the USSR, but the copies were mostly pirated. So Autodesk cut a deal with the USSR for a bulk buy of a custom Cyrillic version. That brought in a revenue stream, and the USSR got a version that their non-English speakers could use.