NAB Report

I just returned from NAB. With a few exceptions I have attended every NAB and AES for the last 20 years. Digidesign's presence at this years NAB has to be one of the strangest developments I have seen at a trade show. Usually Digi has a very large booth that has a large stage area, smaller demo areas and a large number of developer pods. Two years ago Digi used NAB to launch 5.1. This year Digi did not have its own booth at NAB! They had a couple pods buried in the middle of a bunch of Avid pods. The pods that Dig did have seemed to be demo the connection with Avid. There were no Developer booths. Conversely, Apple (directly across from Avid) focused on only four products: FCP4, DVD Studio, Shake and Logic. Logic got as much stage time as FCP4 - including a full blown presentation. In addition, Apple set aside a very large area that offered Logic training classes. If one were to judge the market place by show, Logic has reversed positions. Logic seemed like the definitive audio platform for the Mac. Digidesign seemed to have given up its leadership position to Apple. I don't know if Avid is reacting emotionly to the gains that FCP has made against Avid and Apple's purchase of Emagic or if Avid has a well thought through strategy. I am sorry to say that it appears to me to be the former. This was a very bizzare development.

I think that's crazy. I seriously doubt that Avid and Digi have simply "given up" the market place to Apple. Let me propose a couple of other scenarios. Knowing the Vegas trade show scene the way I do, I think that the unions have put a strangle hold on what can go on there. I also think that Digi doesn't have that strong a presence in the Radio broadcast market. Therefore Digi may not be spending the resources to make a bigger presence (another factor of the unions). Avid, just closed a big deal with NBC's news team. They also, showed a strong 1st quarter. I doubt they are feeling any pressure from FCP in that regards. In addition, Digi does quite a few trade shows and may be gearing up for a bigger show or tour. Avid does a couple of shows a year. So, I wouldn't judge the proverbial book by it's cover. Digi and Avid will always have a huge presence in the market. They both have products that FCP and Logic could only dream of emulating. My $.02, MasterJ

Synclavier (NED) "owned" the market also and was eaten from the bottom up. As the native processors get more powerful, there is less need for outboard hardware in both the video and audio environments. Both Digidesign and Avid are very vulnerable to this. In time the big iron will give way to software. Either Digi and Avid will adapt or not.

Well said Andre. Exactly my point.

Andre, I totally agree with Froyo. The radio segment at the show is the smallest market in comparrison to the Video/Film and Post market at the show. Froyo's observance of the show is exactly the way I saw it when I was there on Monday last week.Logic has a nearly zero presence in Post, except for the Composer market. Could it be that Digi didn't have anything huge to peddle and with the economy and the war, it felt a low profile show was the way to go?

Apple sticks in a few advertisements for Final Cut Pro in Newsweek, Time and MacWorld and people are quick to proclaim the demise of AVID/Digidesign.