Motley Fool criticizes Autodesk's newly expensive upgrade pricing

Even as Autodesk is defending its really expensive new upgrade pricing over at Steve Johnson's blog nauseam as "less expensive," professional money watchers are unimpressed by the spin.

Motley Fool's Anders Bylund  wonders in "Why Autodesk Upgrades Failed to Spark a Frenzy" if charging 50% of list for upgrades is behind Autodesk ceo Carl Bass's admission, "I wouldn't get too excited about share gains in a single quarter." Mr Bylund notes that share gains are normal when a new software release ships, as pent up demand is fulfilled.

Larger companies than Autodesk, such as Adobe and Microsoft, are not as greedy with their upgrading customers.

Comments

[DF]

After Steve Jobs was evicted from Apple in the eighties, a succession of mediocre bosses (glorified accountants, not creators) turned to running up obscene profit on the basis of massively overcharging customers for Macs. Essentially they were milking the inherited goodwill and technology for all it was worth, absent any ideas of their own - right into 3% market share, when Jobs finally returned to save the company, and get it making good products again. Autodesk may be following Microsoft into this cycle.

[Robin Capper]

Rearly, compared to previous editions the upgrade pricing for Office 2010 raises the bar somewhat...

[Mike]

ADSK has always been greedy in respect to its customers. Every upgrade is met with complaints over pricing. Not least the increase the EU has had to put up with, with no accountability.

After reading around, it seems, that blatantly ADSK does not care if users get burned over the price upgrades or sub fees, in conjunction to their ever changing rules, and as ever they always try to 'spin' the numbers.

I'd also suggest that they do have a new policy where unless you are a large company with many seats they just don't care about individuals nor small seat installations.

For years the policy has always punished independents and small seat installations. There is good reason for the many alternative products to ADSK's offerings, and ADSK allowed, nay, made the environment for them all to thrive and succeed.

Their stock prices somewhat reflect this if you look at the long term, their ratios are significantly lower, again over the long term, than many others in comparable software based industries.

If sooner or later they don't cotton on to the fact they are the creators of their own erosion, and had better serve customers, irrespective of size, the future is clear it's Neutral or SELL.