Things are getting ugly at Avid again as the company pink-slipped as many as 60 employees from its Pro Tools, Venue and other audio teams last week.According to Pro Tools Expert, the layoffs happened in the places where Avid could least afford - Product Management, Beta and QA, Applications Engineer and Marketing.
Although Avid stock is not at an all-time low, it's pretty close, down to $6.90 when this was written, which is way off from its 52 week high of $18.10. To put it in perspective, Avid stock hit a high in February of 2005 at $66.90.
This is another great example of why a public company doesn't belong in this niche space we call the audio business. The industry is filled with mostly boutique operators who care deeply about their products and customers, some to the point where barely making a living is enough as long as their customers are happy.
A public company like Avid is beholden to its stockholders and not its customers however. The bottom line is more important than its users and dealers, and that's been obvious ever since Avid purchased Digidesign.
Some analysts think that this might be a last ditch effort to set the company up for a profitable quarter, but that's not going to save the company.
There's a lot of disgruntled Pro Tools users out there, and it won't take much for them to switch to another DAW en masse. That time might come sooner than you think.
2 comments:
We hired our audio engineer in 2003. He had been using ProTools for years so we equipped the new studio with the latest and greatest. Avid NEVER kept up with OS updates and I had nothing but trouble with the portable version that I used remotely. We migrated to Logic several years later and have never looked back. I know that in the "industry" ProTools has been the standard for decades, but I've never developed the same connection that others seem to have. Logic has worked great for me for many, many years.It seems that Avid's concern for the bottom line has been a long running problem. Too bad for the employees who lost their jobs. That's tough.
I totally agree. I have had nothing but problems with Pro Tools and compatibility. I boot up Logic and I'm working immediately. Avid needs a serious overhaul if they are evet going to get me back as a customer. First and foremost, drop the iLok already. They can still have DRM (ala Adobe).
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