Emily Price for Mashable:
Digital design giant Autodesk laid off 7% of its workforce Thursday, sources tell Mashable.
That totals around 500 employees — including a number of 3D developers and several product managers.
Many of the layoffs were handled on a one-by-one basis throughout the day, following the company’s disappointing earnings report.
Autodesk makes a number of 3D and CAD software packages for Mac, along with SketchBook Pro, Smoke online editing and creative finishing software, and more. The company also makes a variety of products for iOS devices.
Oh, and some crap for Windows too.
I understand that this is an Apple-focused blog. But still, if you are going to report on Autodesk, it is important to properly describe the company’s business. The Mac and iOS aspects of their business is rather small. Their bread and butter products are Windows products.
Yes, AutoDesk’s apple producs are incomplete, niche products.
Smoke is going to make quite an impact, I must say.
There, I fixed it. Happy?
I was at a conference a few weeks back where a Autodesk guy was giving a presentation. He said something along these lines “it took us about 20 years to reach an install base of 20m users; on mobile we’ve reached that in less than 5”. Those numbers might be a bit off, but you get the gist. of course the bulk of their profit comes from Windoes software but it’s interesting none the less.
What’s interesting about the layoffs is that Autodesk have been buying companies like they mean it so far this year. They gobbled up at least 8 companies that i know of, probably more too.
Here’s an idea as to what might be causing them to lose revenue: they have a ridiculous pricing model. We use this software to teach a freshman Engineering course at my school. Last year we wanted to expand the number of licenses. It was the most convoluted and ridiculous process. They have so many different pricing models and of course you have to pay for maintenance if you want to have access to support of updates. We ended up not buying more licenses and instead added a second section of the course. If they would just sell us the product for a straight forward fair price we would have bought it in a minute.
Nice to see that you take constructive, respectful suggestions seriously.
And what kills me is that you’re not really aloud to resell it.
iPhone and iPad hardware prototypes were all built in Autocad on Windows. It all came out in the trial discovery.
iPhone and iPad hardware prototypes were all built in Autodesk Alias on Macs.
There FIFY.
iPhone and iPad hardware prototypes were all built in Autodesk Alias on Macs.
FIFY.