No near-term impact seen from Apple's latest pro video editing push
While Apple's announcements at the National Association of Broadcasters conference on Sunday signal a continued push into the pro video space, they aren't seen as incremental to the firm's near-term growth, according one Wall Street analyst.
"Apple has consistently been criticized for not having a way for pro editors to tackle high end projects, given the lack of tools allowing editors to work collaboratively and manage the workflow of big projects," said PiperJaffray analyst Gene Munster, whose team attended the presentation. "We believe the release of Final Cut Server is a sign that Apple is trying to push Final Cut into higher end projects. The success of this tool will likely be a critical factor in whether Apple is able to gain market share at the pro level."
Munster said the next step for Apple could arrive in the form of a more sophisticated editing offering such as a "Final Cut Extreme" edition. In a note to clients on Monday, he noted that a higher end version of Final Cut has been rumored for 2 years, but it failed to materialize again this year.
"Apple's announcements at NAB yesterday are not big news compared to the company's other product announcements this year, and we do not expect that these announcements will impact numbers in the near term," the analyst explained. "That said, Apple has consistently signaled that it is making a bigger push into the pro editing market, with new products and an expanding presence at the NAB tradeshow."
Overall, Munster said the there are two central themes at this year's NAB show — the largest show for broadcast and post production firms — which are the move to HD video and growth in Web-based video.
"We believe the general health of the broadcast and post production industry remains strong, and we would focus on companies positioned to capture business from one of these two major industry trends," he wrote.
Munster maintained an "Outperform" rating and $123 price target on shares of Apple.
41 Comments
Munster clearly doesn't know what he's talking.
Apple delivered a new Codec that is almost lossless performance from 4K on down that allows you to edit at HD speeds. No low rez proxies.
Ever heard of Davinci the high end color grading system. Well a nifty product called Color is included for FREE.
Final Cut Server is actually an amazing product. Producer can actually create comps on windows and then send to the Mac ediitors for finishing.
Compressor is finally the app that you can rely on and has a nifty plugin for Telestream (formerly Flip4Mac) which can output almost every format one would need.
Apple delivered the goods. Whatever the impact is remains to be seen but the fact are Indies have never had more power at their disposal.
I do agree with what he's saying. While I already commented in the first thread, that Server is a BIG product for Apple, and encroaches on Avids territory as never before, FCS, even with these new features, isn't directly competitive with Avids high end offerings.
With that said, they are a good advance, and should lessen the barrier that has been there to FCS's acceptance.
I also agree that these products aren't going to add much to Apple's growth.
Several years ago it would have been different, but now, Apple has grown beyond the point where any pro products can sell enough to add significantly to the sales numbers. At most, we are talking $200 million a year. To a company with sales this year at a estimated $24 to $26 billion, that's a drop in the bucket.
I hope it doesn't have any impact. Seeing a major impact on revenue/profit because of what most would consider "niche" products would probably cause more people to consider Apple's userbase consists mostly of graphic artists and video users, which, as I just said, is a niche market (it might take in money, but its still a niche). If vendors start thinking like that, you might have to start kissing goodbye to some of the non-video software/hardware that people were thinking of bringing to the platform.
the fact is, Indies have never had more power at their disposal.
That's the biggest impact I think. FCP is priced just right to be within reach of anyone wanting to shoot their own film and have it look like a big production without the big budget.
I am extremely curious about Compressor 3 though. It advertises SD to HD upconversion and reverse telecine of 29.97 material using optical flow technology. I know the "junk-in junk-out" analogy, but I wonder how that can help footage taken from any 3-chip camera? Can you shoot in true 24p with anything now?
In this case, Munster doesn't know diddly. FCP is already at the top of it's game, and the new Final Cut Studio is fantastic. I was extremely impressed with the new upgrades and I'll be ordering it this week!