Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription service is highly successful, with the latest report showing they’ve added another 400,000 subscribers in the last quarter to take the total to 1.8 million.
I wonder how many are active Premiere Pro CC users? Obviously a lot more than a year ago.
The new 1.8 million figure is close to the 2 million Production Suite customers that were claimed (in response to Apple’s “2 million FCP classic seats”).
Now Creative Cloud is great value – all Adobe’s apps for just $50 a month – but video-centric folk like me know that the majority of Adobe’s business is in document handling and desktop publishing, rather than the Premiere Pro/After Effects video-centric apps, so it’s unlikely that there are 1.8 million active Premiere Pro CC users. I’d be surprised if 30% of subscribers are active Premiere Pro users, but truthfully I don’t have  a data point for that.
I’d say that Creative Cloud has been a success for Adobe despite some people’s initial concerns with the subscription model. Â You can’t beat that regular $60 million + a month (with some allowance for single app subscribers, discounts, and others not paying full price).
4 replies on “1.8 Million Creative Cloud Subscribers!”
i believe they are getting near $50 per subscriber IIRC when you average individual and team subs. thats closer to 100 mil per month
peoples concerns over a subscription model werent whether it would be a success for adobe but whether it would be good the individual consumer mostly from a cost perspective.
whoever at adobe tells you that this was done for anything other than generating a solid revenue stream is bullshitting you or doesnt what they are talking about
But you have a lot of photographers on the $20 package, and a lot of people on $30 a month pricing (still). That’s why I averaged the income per subscriber back a little.
I think Adobe have been quite up-front that the subscription approach was a response to the hassles created by Sarbanes Oxley and updates for apps. (I suspect that’s what’s at the heart of Avid’s accounting issues.)
Philip
RedGiant offers a “lifetime” option to its subscription model. That lifetime cost seems to be less than what it would cost to “buy” the premium plugins.
I think it might be good for Adobe to offer a “lifetime” option as well and, it’s at that point, they might offer a differentiated model for the video vs print.
My guess is that Adobe actually prefers to have never ending income from each “renter” but it seems RedGiant has come to a different conclusion (at this point).
Simply put, Adobe is a public company that has to abide by Sarbanes Oxley rules. For that reason alone they will keep with the subscription only model.
Red Giant is a private company that does not have to comply with Sarbanes Oxley and can do what they want.
Don’t expect any change except MORE (public) companies following Adobe’s lead here and going subscription only. That would have likely prevented Avid’s current financial reporting woes related to the affect of Sarbanes Oxley on their revenue reporting.