Adobe Voice, a free iPad app that lets you make ‘explainer’ videos
Adobe Voice: A Happy App for Making Explainer Videos — You know Adobe, right? — This is the company that makes extremely complex software for professionals. This is the company whose flagship product, Photoshop, has over 500 menu commands.
Context & Ripple Effects
Adobe's May 2014 release of Voice lands in the middle of an unusually busy stretch for the company: just weeks earlier it had settled the anti-poaching lawsuit alongside Apple, Google and Intel for $324 million, and in February it rushed out an emergency Flash Player patch for an actively exploited zero-day — so its public face was equal parts legal cleanup and security firefighting.
Voice is also a notable counterpoint to Adobe's own mobile pricing posture. In January 2014 the company was signaling an imminent iPad Lightroom with a planned $99/year subscription attached, while Voice ships completely free — the same company that makes Photoshop with its hundreds of menu commands now courting people who never wanted to learn a menu at all.
First-order effects
- Adobe hands non-professionals — teachers, small businesses, presenters — a free tool for narrated explainer videos on iPad, opening its brand to users who would never buy Creative Cloud.
Second-order effects
- A free flagship-style app sits awkwardly beside Adobe's paid mobile plans like the $99/year Lightroom subscription announced in January 2014, forcing the company to clarify whether free tablet apps are marketing funnels into subscriptions or a separate consumer line.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, professional creative vendors unbundle their suites into free single-purpose tablet apps, shifting competition from feature depth inside one product to breadth of approachable apps that feed a paid core.
The trend: Adobe and other professional-software makers are unbundling complex creative suites into free, single-purpose tablet apps aimed at people who never learned the professional tools.