Starting up the thread again. Avid has sunk to new lows in the last two trading days, most likely due to the overall technology correction. However, Data Translation, Avid's chief competitor had several recent announcements that might be affecting Avid's prospects.
DATX announced that it was lowering the price of its entry level nonlinear product, the Media 100qx by about 17%, from a suggested list of $5,995 to $4,995. Street price is expected to be around $4,000. This product has received rave reviews and is the identical hardware card shipped with their top of the line professional system, which still sells for around $30,000. It uses Adobe Premiere as its software, so the professional features aren't all there, but still, it can do a lot for the price. And users can upgrade to the Media 100 professional level system, adding features as needed simply by calling up and getting the codes over the phone to unlock these additional features.
DATX has also begun shipping Broadway, a killer MPEG encoding system for $1,000. This also has received very positive reviews in the trades and is a price break-through. DATX announced support for Netscape's LiveMedia framework, allowing Broadway users to quickly and easily create compressed video content for the internet.
I'm currently holding some DATX shares, which also have slipped back quite a bit from the high a couple months ago. Still trying to decide whether to buy some AVID again, especially at these prices. Between the two of them, AVID and DATX probably own 95% of the nonlinear editing market, which has become a standard in my industry.
I can post the DATX press releases here if anyone is interested. |
