We Need An Adobe Lightroom True Competitor Locked

Tuonov2 wrote:

BackToNature1 wrote:

Personally, the more competition, the better. Personally, I really don't like how more companies are going to this yearly subscription thing. So I really don't see things getting all that better for software processing. Especially when others seem to not really push these companies to really improve what they produce.

As a consumer, I am not a fan of subscriptions. But from a business perspective, I understand that SaaS enables generating revenue after the product launch, especially allowing to cover cost of product updates/patches/maintenance as users continue to use the software and ask for improvements/fixes.

Just recently, another software company combined all their programs like many others just so they can Charge More, with us mostly getting, less.

I don't like it either, my non photography professional software is going that way too, there's nothing we can do about it though so we just have to suck it up and price it in to our fixed costs.

If there is a suitable solution, we all can vote with our wallets, buying those products which still are offered as one-off purchases.

On the other hand you would think if there's an obvious financially lucrative gap in the market waiting to be exploited there would be someone jumping right in. Seeing as there seems to be no queue of companies doing that I would have thought that that particular gap wasn't as lucrative as people seem to think...

While there is an overall large market, and even a relatively smaller piece of the pie will be substantial, I think there are (at least) two apparent obstacles to overcome:

Firstly, loyalty. Whether it's loyalty to a brand, comfort of using a certain GUI/way of working, or switching costs, there can be many reasons consumers don't switch away from a solution that no longer satisfies them fully. To lure users away at a satisfactory rate, the alternative must not only be "as good as", but appreciably better than the solution they are leaving in ways that are marketable and significant enough to the consumer to make a difference.

Secondly, R&D. To compete on Adobe's very wide functionality takes a lot of time, resources, know-how and cash. None of the smaller competitors are anywhere near being able to even target challenging Adobe in that fashion. This is why many smaller players will go narrow and deep, in terms of feature set, and an alternative to Adobe would look like a patchwork workflow of SME programs with a capable but limited feature set. (Which is a level of workflow complexity many users won't be willing to adopt "just" to get away from Adobe, see above.)