WorldCAD Access

The Thrill of the New, the Value of Free

Just Another iPhone Blog posts a chart that PinchMedia first posted last February showing the decline in use of free software. (It is not clear to me if this applies just to iPhone/iTouch apps, or to all software.)
 


Here is another chart, this one appearing today in Silicon Valley Insider. It shows the delta in Wikipedia editors.



Both figures chart the lack of ongoing thrill for the new and the free.

Software Top 100 List Year Out of Date

A reader asked if he could trust the numbers on 2009 Software Top 100 at www.softwaretop100.org/list2009.php. I looked it over, and the numbers seemed somewhat off for being a 2009 edition (compiled in August). Fer instance:

#16 Autodesk -- revenues of $2.3 billion.

#40 Siemens (UGS) -- revenues were flat at $800 million.

Each entry has a link. When I clicked, I found that the numbers for "2009" are actually for Fiscal Year 2008 or older, which could be as much as 18 months out of date.

As for the Siemens (UGS) entry, it's an old revenue from an earlier years (pre-Siemens) that is shown. 

What to Expect From Autodesk This Year

During yesterday's delayed conference call with financial analysts, Jay Vleeschhouwer of Ticonderoga Securities asked:

...I'd like to ask about the commitment you have, or your expectations of the various new and incremental initiatives you've spoken of in this past year, for instance, expanding the line of preconfigured suites, design-on-demand, simulation, Autodesk products on the Mac, so on and so forth.

Autodesk ceo Carl Bass replied:

You'll see suites [bundles of applications], you'll see on-demand applications [such as yesterday's Bluestreak], you'll see new applications on the Mac [I predict AutoCAD], all that will happen this year.

Gosh, Which Headline to Believe?

Autodesk receives a flurry of attention after it huge fall in revenues, relative to a year ago. This morning, Yahoo Alerts delivered me this spate of conflicting headlines:

MarketWatch: Autodesk, Salesforce lead tech-sector losses

Zacks.com: Autodesk Beats [Zacks Consensus expectation], Guidance Mixed 

Seattle Times: Autodesk falls after forecast [implies higher costs and lower profit than Wall Street had expected]

Bloomberg: Autodesk Drops After Profit Forecast Misses [analyst's] Estimates 


As for Autodesk, its official headline is much cheerier: Autodesk Increases Profitability in Third Quarter Fiscal 2010 [relative to Q2].

The difference between these headlines, of course, is that their statements are relative. Zacks says Autodesk did better than Zacks expects, but Bloomberg says it did worse than Bloomberg expected. Autodesk Q3 profits were up compared to Q2, but plunged 72% from the same quarter a year ago.

CAD Vendors Declare War on Prices!!!

In Germany, CAD Schroer is wooing those who downloaded the free version of their STHENO/PRO drafting software for Pro/ENGINEER users: download it free, and then get a 75% discount. 

Once you get past the large print, you learn from the small print it's not quite 75%. You pay $875 for the software (there's the 75% discount), but also have to purchase the one-year software support and maintenance contract for another $585. Now the discount stands at a somewhat less thrifty 64%. Offer ends 30 November (but I would expect to see it extended "due to popular demand" or some similar reason). Details here.

Autodesk has the same offer: download AutoCAD LT free and then after 30 days pay for a license at a 46% discount, after two rebates are included. Offer ends 15 January, two weeks before Autodesk's fiscal year-end.

ZWCAD vs AutoCAD in China 

ZWSoft is taking advantage of Autodesk's massive 80% price cut in China to artfully respond. The way this article reads, it sounds as if Autodesk lowered the price of AutoCAD to match that of ZWCAD's. 

In reaction, ZWSoft is halving the price of their IntelliCAD-based ZWCAD. Offer valid until Feb 3 of next year.

I don't know if Trading Markets is presenting the "ZWCAD Software Kicks Off Price War with Autodesk" as an article or a press release. Nevertheless, it offers up juicy gossip on the CAD world in China:

Autodesk's price-cutting aims to push out ZWSOFT and snatch market share from its Chinese peers, pointed out [ZWCAD's] Liu Yufeng. 

Actually, Autodesk has been leading China's CAD field with a 50% market share. In recent years, CAXA Technology Co., Ltd. and ZWSOFT geared up in the domestic market through the promotion of multifunctional and low-price products. From 2007 to 2009, ZWSOFT's number of newly authorized uses has caught up with that of Autodesk. 

Besides, homegrown CAD software companies formed a CAD software alliance under the leadership of ZWSOFT, enabling partners to develop applications freely on the latter's platforms, which received warm welcome from customers and imposed great pressure on Autodesk. 

Insiders deem that unsatisfying performance is another reason for Autodesk's markdown. ...Its sales value even dived 42% in the emerging market. At the end of 2008, Autodesk announced a decision to change the president of its Greater China region.

A Second Adobe Christmas

It's getting to become a habit, Adobe laying off hundreds of employees in time for turning the Christmas season uncheery. A year ago, it was 600 workers; this year, another 600. Next year?

But whose fault is it? It's yours, of course. You are not buying enough software from Adobe.

Ugh 3: Nemetschek Q3: Down 11%

Germany CAD software holding company Nemetschek reports Q3 revenues of e31.7 million (about US$48 million), down by 22% from a year ago. 

Like many other CAD firms, the company is finding that maintenance revenues are holding up (up 5%), but software sales are dragging down the results (down 22%), as are revenues from services and hardware (down 24%).

Net income was e1.8million, down 24%. The company has 326.7 e26.7 million cash in the bank.

Nemetschek is a holding company for brands such as Graphisoft, Vectorworks, and allplan.

Source [pdf].

Lovable Analyst Quotes

From the nVidia conference call, sayings by analysts that just ring clear to our ears:

I guess from an end demand perspective, first and foremost, beyond the limitations on the supply side, are you seeing any sort of abnormal seasonality or inventory related impact on demand as we look into the fourth quarter?
     - Ross Seymore - Deutsche Bank

I guess first of all on the gross margins, could you maybe give us some quantification about how much of that improvement was driven by improved mix with the transition to 55 and 40-nanometer and how much was driven by better product cost based on that or better mix based on more workstations or just higher end GPUs?
      - James Schneider - Goldman Sachs

Do you have a framework for how we should think about seasonality for the beginning of next year?
     - Tim Luke - Barclays Capital


And finally, some advice for companies who raise prices:

Q: Ddoes that imply that you are able to raise prices in this environment?

nVidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: We don't raise prices. There's no such thing. I mean, raising prices because demand is high is just bad mojo, man. You don't want to go there.

Source.

Reason to Cheer: ANSYS Q3 Revenues Flat

Ansys announces its Q3 revenues of $128.8 million were flat compared with the same quarter a year ago. In these recessionary times, that's doing good. Ceo Jim Cashman credits "our strong value proposition, combined with strong customer relationships built over many years, and our dedicated employees."

Net income, however, was up 7% to $41.4 million over a year ago.

For Q4, the company expects revenue in the range of $135.8-$141.8 million; for the full year, revenue of $502.3-$508.3 million. Next year, ANSYS expects to grow its revenues by 8%-13%. 

Source.

The IBM PLM Revenue Boost to Dassault -- Not So Much

Jay Vleeschhouwer reminds me that not all of the roughly $550 million in IBM PLM revenues will be added to Dassault's, since Dassault was already getting about $330 million from IBM.

I was double-counting.