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Adobe still ripping off EU buyers?

by Bob Crabtree on 19 January 2006, 10:51

Tags: Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE)

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ROCIE - the game they all love to play


In a briefing last week by Adobe, members of the press were told outright that the company was going to be "levelling" the prices of its software between the USA and Europe - with prices in Euros being pegged far closer to those in dollars. The upshot of this should mean - as we understood it - prices of Adobe software in Europe will no longer be a whole lot more that in the USA.

Trouble is, the people who briefed the people who briefed the press couldn't have given them chapter and verse on what the relative prices on each side of the pond would be THIS week because, it looks to us, like Adobe is continuing to play that maddening old game ROCIE - Rip Off Customers In the EU.

Last week's briefing was in preparation for the launch a few days after (Monday, January 17 - the start of this week) of new versions of Adobe's lead moving-image and audio editing programs - Premiere Pro 2.0, After Effects 7.0, Encore DVD 2.0 and Audition 2.0. All are available separately but the company is clearly hoping that many copies will be going out in bundles, rather than being sold individually. The savings, if you need or want all elements of the suites, can be considerable.

Initially there will be three suites - Production Studio Standard, Production Studio Premium and the Video Bundle - each centring on Premiere 2.0 and After Effects 7.0. The two Production Studio suites are pitched in the UK at exactly the same price as the suites they replace and that was something that rather surprised us given Adobe's price-levelling pledge. Production Studio Standard - taking over from Video Collection Standard 2.5 - is being sold by Adobe UK's online store for £915 ex-VAT (£1,075.12 inc). Production Studio Premium, replacing Video Collection Pro 2.5, goes out for £1,335 ex-VAT (£1,568.62). The Video Bundle - with no direct predecessor - is priced at £1,619/£1,902.32.


Prices of Adobe Video Collection 2.5Prices of Adobe's now-discontinued Video Collection 2.5


Production Studio Standard consists of three substantive programs - the Premiere Pro 2 video editor; AE 7.0 Standard for special effects; and image editor Photoshop CS2. In contrast, its predecessor, Video Collection Standard 2.5, had four - Premiere Pro 1.5; After Effects 6.5 Standard; the sound editor Audition 1.5; and disc-authoring package Encore DVD 1.5. So Photoshop comes into the suite and purchasers loose the audio capabilities of Audition and the DVD-creation features of Encore.

However, Encore DVD 2.0 and Audition 2.0 are included for the extra £420/£493 that Production Studio Premium costs, and so are the graphics-creation app Illustrator CS2, Photoshop CS2 and the Professional version of After Effects 7.0, as well as Premiere Pro 2.0. So that's six substantive programs, compared to the five that came for the same prices with Video Collection Pro 2.5 - Premiere Pro 1.5, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Audition 1.5, Encore DVD 1.5 and Photoshop CS.

The Video Bundle is priced at £1,619/£1,902.32 and adds one further program to those provided in Production Studio Premium - Flash Professional 8.0, a prime piece of web-action-creation software from Adobe's most recent company purchase, Macromedia.

Across this trio of suites, Production Studio Standard might already be starting to look to you to be over priced, especially compared to the far-better-spec'd Premium package - and, doubtless, Adobe wants things that way. However, each of the three suites does offer substantial savings if the alternative is buying individual programs piecemeal. For the Standard suite, the saving is a not-to-be-sniffed-at £770 (£904.74 inc VAT), while for PS Premium it's a rather staggering £1,625 (£1,909.35). With the Video Bundle, the figures are truly amazing - £1,830 (£2,150.22).


Savings - Adobe Production Studio suites vs componentsThe savings from buying Adobe's suites can be massive

Of course, there are lots of other ways of buying in the UK apart from Adobe's web shop, so hopefully, there will be some price competition on this side of the pond for the suites and the individual programs within. And that's potentially good news.

But it's only half the story.

If you dive over to the next page, you'll see that, as we said at the outset, Adobe still seems intent on flogging its programs to us at far higher prices than it sells them for in the USA. And things would have looked far worse if we'd also included VAT but we didn't - all the comparative calculations use pre-tax figures.