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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."
A professor at a local US University handed our help desk a CD labeled "Adobe & Macromedia's Greatest Hits, Vol. II"
She wanted us to install Photoshop and Dreamweaver off the disk. The help deskers explained how it was a pirated copy, and how her dept. could legally purchase the software for significant discount for educational purposes. She protested, saying it was legit because she'd paid 5 dollars for it on her travels in Malaysia.
Try as hard as you can to rationalize it, but if they are losing money there it makes good sense for them to drop out of the business there. I mean, cmon, piracy rates are over 90%! A vast majority of the software there doesn't make them any money and if they can't sell enough copies to recoup their losses, who can blame them?
So, now the pirates have two choices: stop pirating (or at least to the same extent), or lose language support for their copies.
I mean, they can pirate English versions still, but I'm sure they would prefer copies in their own languages. It is their own fault for this happening.
I don't believe that they have actually lost $4 billion, because not everyone buys copies, but even if 1% of those people would have bought copies they would have lost $40 million.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
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.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
It doesn't hurt them at all to have English language versions pirated in Asia, in fact they probably prefer that to having their competitor's products pirated.
But if it costs $650,000 to produce an Asian languages version of their products (a number I can easily believe, having done localizations of much smaller products), and they don't recoup that cost, there's no point in doing it.
This is news?
That's like selling what, 10 copies of photoshop? ;)
-- Dan
I don't think Adobe expects to curb piracy at all. But that's not really their goal -- their goal is to spend their R&D money in a way that they can get the most bang for their buck.
If they have to spend $750,000 to develop a Chinese language version of Photoshop, which only sells a thousand legitimate copies (at $600/each), they've just lost money. They'd be better off putting their $750,000 in a savings account (except maybe a BofA savings account, which would charge them a $300K "We gotta count your money" fee) and selling only a hundred copies of their English language version in China.
What's tougher to determine is if, by not creating a Chinese version, they're hurting themselves in the long-term. Let's say they don't develop a Chinese version of Photoshop. Somebody like JASC could develop a Chinese version of Paint Shop Pro and gain a large following in China. Then, if we assume that at some point in the future, the Chinese market is profitable, Adobe might be in trouble. Everybody in China will be used to using Paint Shop Pro, and might not bother swapping over to Photoshop.
It's a question of determining when it'll be profitable to spend money developing Chinese language versions of software, and deciding just how much the Chinese care about getting a native language version of their software.
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
I am a programmer. I do it for a living. I make a living because people can't just take what I make and sell it without my knowledge, without paying me. These people make a mockery out of my livelyhood.
.sg, .my or .cn ISPs.
We care about companies breaching GPL-licenses, and we should care about these people breaching the commercial software world's licences.
Asia will never get a software industry of their own if they continue this way, and will be doomed to producing cut-throat priced commodity hardware for the rest of the world.
I hope Adobe makes it real hard to use their programs on computers where the clock is set to Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur or Beijing time, or the internet connection reveals they are connected to
If they can't pay for commercial saftware, they'll just have to settle for GPL'ed alternatives!!!
I have known Chinese (in China) who own little more than 2 white shirts, a pair of pants, and a bicycle.
However, they may use a computer at work to do personal jobs. They may run software on a computer at work that costs, in the U.S., more than their entire net worth.
This is not lost profit for companies like Adobe. It is free advertising and free trademark promotion.
No amount of law-making or law enforcement will make these people pay hundreds of U.S. dollars for Adobe Photoshop. However, advertise that you need someone who knows how to use Photoshop, and hundreds will apply. Is this a bad thing?
People in the U.S. get little accurate news of other countries. They often unconsciously make the assumption that other people are as rich as they are.
U.S. Senator Biden, who is an intelligent and educated man, and who is the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, doesn't even pronounce the words correctly, yet he talks of changing (my article, see the Biden interview) the Saudi government and controlling the development of the government of Afghanistan. If Senator Biden is like this, make a guess about the knowledge of other countries of the average Adobe executive.
Adobe executives should not consider that every pirated copy is a personal attack on Adobe profitability. There are many social situations that require more social sophistication than that.
Bush's education improvements were
The Acrobat format is not proprietary. I have the entire spec in a binder right here. I downloaded it from Adobe and printed it freely, then used it to create code that writes PDF files.
.ps files. But I can't see spending much time decoding a paragraph that contains the phrase donkey jiz in it.
I have written web based programs that generate PDF without using any Adobe code. (When you need to be in control of the exact layout and 75dpi is not good enough, it is a great choice.)
TeX is happy to make PDF files. My Mac is happy to write anything I wish out as a PDF file instead of printing. In linux I have a little program to convert postscript to pdf. No Adobe software required on those systems.
I do tend to use Acrobat Reader for reading them, but I also use xpdf (launches much faster under linux) and, under OS X, Preview to read them.
I don't even understand that part about scanned documents and
It is possible that there is another format that provides precise display at high resolution in an easily navigable, on demand downloadable format, but I haven't heard of it. Long live PDF.
Everyone thinks they are the biggest market in the world, but here are some facts about china's "market".
Out of 3 billion people, 900 million of them are rural peasants who don't have a pot to pee in. These are people that are so poor that they go for months without even seeing currency, let alone using it.
100 million of them are rural farm workers who may sometimes receive a "paycheck", but who are not employed for long periods of time. These people make a fraction of what a McDonalds grill cook makes in the US.
Of the remaining 2 billion, you have a tiny elite of maybe 120-80 million people who make money in a range that is remotely similar to the west. Of all the people who receive somewhere in a living wage range, maybe 500 million of them, save 40% of their income and use 60% to live. They do this because their economy is fragile and they are subject to losing their incomes rather easily. Compare that to Americans where 4% of people's income (on average) is saved.
The Chinese do not have descretionary income to spend on software. This is what Adobe is really coming to grips with. If it were made to be incapable of stealing the software, they would just go without!
Companies that make money in China are like Coke-a-Cola, Pepsi, Marlboro. These are companies that make 80-90% of their money outside the US anyway. The rest of the companies (like Adobe) tread water for years and never turn the corner. This is the reality of the Chinese market: they are an export economy with a weak domestic economy. A place where slavery was "abolished" in 1929. A place where children participate in forced labor programs to pay for their educations. Where you recieve the death penalty for selling a fossil you dug up in your own backyard to a non-Chinese buyer.
(I have no idea why we have a normalized trade relationship with this country and yet Cuba is still under an embargo)
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."
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.