Audition sales figures ?

Sorry guys, not a tech question (but I couldn't find an appropriate forum for this):

has anyone a pointer/idea on how many units of Audition have been sold per year ? I am conducting a market research here (for my invention on www.sunics.com).

cheers,
Diego

Whether Adobe's company reports would show it I don't know, but that's the first place to look.  I rather doubt whether such market-sensitive data would be published though, and nobody here would have a clue.

Peter's right - we'd be guessing and Adobe won't tell. The best you could hope to get from them would be a total sales figure, but somehow, I don't think that this will be readily forthcoming.

Also, to get anything meaningful at all from the figures, you'd have to break them down to differentiate sales of Audition as part of the Creative Suite from audio-only sales. We have good reason to think that Audition frightens the life out of a lot of Creative Suite users, who are primarily video-based creatures. So whilst they appear to have purchased the program, you couldn't really call them users of it, as such.

But I think that the reaction you'd get from Adobe for such a request would be along the lines of "If we told you, we'd have to kill you..."

But I think that the reaction you'd get from Adobe for such a request would be along the lines of "If we told you, we'd have to kill you..."

LOL and thanks heaps guys. I am scared now 

Well let's put it like this - I've signed an Adobe NDA covering anything commercial that lasts for the rest of my life, so they could tell me what the sales figures were and not have to kill me, except in court if I told you. But they won't tell me either!

Digital Music Doctor has compiled a chart showing the popularity of various music recording programs based on internet hits......Audition   is in the top three with Pro Tools and Cubase. I don't know the actual sales figures either, but I have read Adobe has been having a very good couple of yeras, profitwise.

Check out the chart on this link.......


http://www.digitalmusicdoctor.com/press/music_software_popularity_2006Q4.htm



.

Digital Music Doctor has compiled a chart showing the popularity of various music recording programs based on internet hits...

I'm not sure this really means very much.  The 'most popular' is Pro-tools - but one is forced to wonder what flavour of Pro-tools are we talking about, the extremely expensive (and over-hyped) studio version, or the emasculated version that comes with M-Audio hardware products?  CuBase is shown to be twice as popular as Sonar - whereas CuBase and Cakewalk were usually considered to be about equal in popularity not so long ago and it seems to be a bit odd that CUBase has suddenly appered to leap ahead.

"This index is based on a three-month average of Internet search activity".  Hmmm... to my mind, the fact that someone has searched for information, on any product, is no indication as to whether or not they purchased it.  Also, a lot of that search activity must surely be related to people looking for Warez.   

To me, the whole reasoning behind this method af ascertaining the popularity of different softwares is faulty and the results are, at best, pretty debateable (or unreliable, depending on your point of view).

CEP/Audition is popular, there's no doubt about that, but activity on other forums leads me to believe there are a lot of cracked versions in use (as there are a lot of cracked versions of all he major softwares).  Someone using cracked software is not likely to be a potential paying customer for anything else.

Check out the chart on this link.......

I've provided a link to it before, and I think that Graeme's right - certainly in part. Audition's been in the top three spot for a long time now, and a look at the subdivision information shows that the searches are split quite evenly between Audition and CEP - or at least they did last time l looked.

There are a lot of ways you could interpret the information though - and because of this, I really don't think that it indicates anything other than the fact that CEP/AA is popular. But it certainly doesn't indicate whether it's legal versions that are... 

Guys, you certainly rock !

Hmm, all I need is a rough estimate. (Maybe I shoud launch a poll, haha - no don't worry). Has anyone an educated guesstimate on let's say if we're talking 1'000, 10'000 or ?? units (not counting the hacks, of course) ?

Here's my thinking:

The 2006 Form 10-K report mentions 1.4bil for 'Creative Solutions' (p.47). Let's say at least 1% of this is 'Production Studio' and 10% of 'Production Studio' is 'Adobe Audition'. That's still $1.4mio..(or roughly 4500+ units).

any comments welcome 

[roughly 4500+]

The 2006 Form 10-K report mentions 1.4bil for 'Creative Solutions' (p.47). Let's say at least 1% of this is 'Production Studio' and 10% of 'Production Studio' is 'Adobe Audition'. That's still $1.4mio..(or roughly 4500+ units).

Oh, if you only want that sort of clue, then you are way off. I can show you one (admittedly major) broadcaster that has almost that many seats on its own. When you consider that just about every broadcaster on the planet uses at least one seat of it, and often rather a lot more, and that there are plenty of different versions still in use, then I'd guess that sticking a 0 on the end of your estimate would be more accurate. And even that may not be enough - this forum alone has 1840 members, and that's after we pruned the list. When you consider that the Adobe forum has as many, if not more, users and that between us this still only represents by our estimate a small proportion of what's out there, the mid 5-figure estimate looks rather more reasonable as a starting point, I'd say.

But this is absolutely all educated speculation - none of it has ever been confirmed, and even my knowledge about the broadcaster mentioned I shouldn't really know... (but I do!)

[yearly]

..and that there are plenty of different versions still in use, then I'd guess that sticking a 0 on the end of your estimate would be more accurate.

Wow ! 

I am trying to estimate the sales per year, though, so the different versions wouldn't count (apart of upgrades) and the forum number would have to be roughly divided by the total years in which they subscribed. So maybe I should not stick that extra '0' to the end - or did you mean to add an extra zero to the yearly sales ? Anyway, thanks again, Steve 

But this is absolutely all educated speculation..

Yes, I am 100% aware of this.

[yearly]

So maybe I should not stick that extra '0' to the end - or did you mean to add an extra zero to the yearly sales ?

No, I was talking about total sales, rather than yearly ones. It's very hard to say much at all about yearly ones, because they would almost certainly be dependant on release dates of new versions. Which would of course distort the figures quite considerably, and in a rather non-linear fashion, I'm afraid.

I agree, thanks gain