Interesting complaint from Autodesk ceo Carl Bass as reported by an article from Jessica Leber in MIT's Technology Review:
For 99 cents, people feel very entitled.
The context is the consumer market that Autodesk recently re-entered*, and the customers who buy a 99-cent app for their Android or iOS device, and then complain to Mr Bass that a certain photo filter is missing -- much more so than corporate customers of the company's $5,000 software. See technologyreview.com/news/428655/why-a-high-end-software-maker-pursues-app.
Autodesk is used to the traditional top-down software business, where a few elites inside the company make ultimate decisions over which functions to add to new releases -- and which to remove.
To me, he sounds surprised that his new 99-cent customer base has such high expectations. This has always been the case, for consumers have been encouraged to have unrealistic expectations by the likes of department stores allowing receipt-less returns for no reason, and further reinforced by the "customer is always right" mantra.
In the Android and iOS world, high expectations are further driven by the intense competition between top app makers, and the ease with which Android and iOS users can switch between apps. Don't like how Plume looks in its latest update? Downloading another Twitter client takes seconds. I downloaded a half-dozen movie apps before I found the one just right for me (DicePlayer, on Android, by the way.) All gain, no pain!
Autodesk's marketing department likes to talk about bringing democracy to the design business. But then Mr Bass sounds surprised when the people do speak up. For consumers, letting Mr Bass know that a filter is missing from Pixlr is a form of crowd-sourcing; they want the software to improve, and the grassroots have ideas on how to do it. Else, they will exercise their "democratic right"** and download a different 99-cent photo editor that gives them what they want.
I wouldn't want to be in a business that sells products for less than the cost of a cheap chocolate bar. At 99 cents, apps are essentially free, and so I wonder if fickle 99-cent consumers can even be considered "customers."
Does Autodesk really want to go after the 99-cent consumer market? It helps to understand Autodesk's desire, for it desires to be as well-known as an "apple" or a "twitter." This puzzles me, for with great public fame comes even greater public grief. Why would they want to risk the drawbacks of fame, such as the grief Twitter this week suffered following its short-lived role as censor? I have no idea.
I like being well-known in our little industry, and anonymous in my home town.
*) This is Autodesk's second attempt at entering the consumer market. The first was known as Autodesk Retail Products, and sold several useful pieces of software, such as a PowerPoint competitor, home design software, and intelligent games -- before Carol Bartz shut it down in the mid-1990s.
**) This action is neither democratic nor a right, of course, and hence the quotation marks.
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