What does Avid make from Professional Video Editing Software?

We can use Avid’s accounts and their 10K filing to calculate revenue for their professional video editing software (i.e. Media Composer/Symphony and DS). In Avid’s 2011 10K filing they state:

Sales of professional video-editing products accounted for approximately 11%, 13% and 13% of our consolidated net revenues for 2011, 2010 and 2009, respectively.

Let’s assume the 11% figure continued to hold for 2012 (probably not, and certainly not after Avid’s NAB 2013 pricing announcements). With consolidated net revenue of $436,746,000 for the first 9 months of 2012, that would suggest video software generated about $48 million.

While I believe most of Avid’s professional video software revenue is mostly upgrades (and in 2011/2012 crossgrades) if we used a wholesale Media Composer price of $1746 (70% of retail) then we get 27,500 units.

Again I do not think this is really a useful figure as many pay educational pricing, there have been some aggressive crossgrade deals offered, and most revenue probably comes from upgrades. It’s just an interesting data point.

Unfortunately it’s not easy to get any idea on what revenue Final Cut Pro X or Premiere Pro bring to their companies. Apple do not break out Pro Apps in their accounting, and at this point any attempt to guess units sold would be just that: a guess. Until Apple release sales figures it’s pointless guessing.

Premiere Pro is so tied into the Production Bundle sales, and now with Creative Cloud all Creative Cloud users are potential Premiere Pro users, it’s probably almost impossible to get a truly accurate number of users, as opposed to those who joined Creative Cloud and downloaded Premiere Pro.

Just as knowing how much revenue Avid makes from professional video editing software really tells us nothing about unit sales or upgrades.