Adobe – motivated by greed?

Adobe have, through development themselves and through the purchase of other software firms got themselves into the position of owning the vast majority of ‘industry standard’ software titles for the Photographic, Design, and Web industries – effectively the creative sector.

This, you might assume is fine – afterall there are lots of companies out there that have close to a monopoly on their particular markets, but this is not the problem, the issue here is cost – Adobe price their products at an eye-watering level that almost beggars belief – especially for the UK market.

You might be thinking that it’s probably only a bit more expensive than their competitors, but because it is the ‘industry standard’ then that would be fine – well you’d be wrong – the prices far exceed what could be rationally accepted as fine. For example, I regularly use four titles, the current versions, along with their prices are:

• Fireworks CS4 – UK £279 USA $299 (£193 at current exchange rate)
• Photoshop CS4 – UK £627 USA $699 (£451 at current exchange rate)
• Flash CS4  – UK £633 USA $699 (£451 at current exchange rate)
• Acrobat – UK £521 USA $449 (£290 at current exchange rate)

It is immediately clear that there is a big disparity between the UK and USA pricing that equates to an additional cost of £675 to a UK user – this has no reason for being – the prices are for a digital download of the products and as there is no physical product there is no shipping or handling fees to be included, and even if a physical copy of the software was imported, it is not subject to customs excise duty.

There is a cheaper alternative to buying these titles seperately, and that is to purchase a ‘Suite’ which includes these titles (and a few more besides) however this is still subject to the same disparity. The UK price is £1,545 saving £515 on the individual prices, however the price in the USA for the Suite is $1699 which is £447 cheaper still.

So why do they insist on ripping-off their customers?  The only conclusion that can be reached is this – they know they have a market that has become reliant on this software, so it is simply greed (along with a seemingly evident contempt for the UK) that motivates them. And should you think “I can get it much cheaper than that as I am a student” then yes you would be right – typically it is around 70% cheaper for students (upon completion of an extensive fulfilment of proving entitlement) – however be warned, once you have completed your studies Adobe insist that you must re-purchase your software at full prices in order to continue using it – they will disable software suspected of no longer being used with a valid license type.

NB, prices quoted are from the Adobe UK/US websites and based on direct purchase – shopping around online can find further savings, although they still reflect the different pricing structure.

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Tags: Acrobat, Adobe, Fireworks, flash, Greed, Photoshop, Rip-off, Software