Tisk Tisk - Altium moving to China!

[Strube09]

Disappointed in Altium:

http://www.noodls.com/view/35AEF71FED0C4035C1F9EA872525988B2CCC323E

Strube

[Zad]

Hell yes, that is one huge mother of a mistake. A bit of a bugger for Dave too. Hope there was a bloody good redundancy.

I wonder if they are owned by a Chinese company or something now? There is this impression that China is now the centre of the world's economy and has suddenly acquired all the skills it needs for future growth. It is cheap right now, but sure as eggs is eggs, inflation will hit eventually, and there will be a shortage of trained and skilled people to do the jobs. Great at production, not so great at innovation.

I really hope a group of the ex-Altium guys get together and produce a competitor. I'm afraid over the last few years they rather took their eye off the ball and Creeping Featurage took over. The low and middle end of the market is huge and devoid of a decent product. Eagle is far from easy to use, and DesignSpark also feels like a product for amateurs.

[implor]

Maybe this is why Dave said that he will do the show full time - for a while.

[allanw]

Well, I've heard that Altium hasn't been that profitable. From a business perspective, this makes sense.

Of course, it's still unfortunate for the current employees:

The first stage of the move will involve a reorganization of the Sydney office operations including a significant reduction in staff.

[Alex]

They probably saw China as a platform 'in the making' where groundbreaking thinking can be adopted more easily. Same story with renewables.
I dont see why the execs needed to move to China to do this though, leaving behind the rest. Let them go and enjoy their Bejing duck, they will come back after dinner.

Cadence OrCAD is the standard for bigger companies (Intel) and Altium Designer has been traditionally used by smaller/niche companies.

[mikeselectricstuff]

For a company whose main business is complex software that needs a high level of support my feeling is it's potentially suicidal.
When did you last see software from China that was well-designed, fully documented and bug-free..?

[Alex]

They will probably need to bring new people on the R&D team; I don't think most aussies were very excited about relocating to China...

Oh, here it is:

Altium plans to expand its R&D team over time by drawing on the talent pool in China.

I dont think support will be an issue as they are keeping their global support centres. They probably want to make business partners in China and get China to use the new versions of Altium.

[RayJones]

Bang!

Whoops where did my foot go?

Obviously been poisoned by the big dollar.
They were real good when they were the small Protel startup in Tasmania.
Then they bought into America and that was when the price hikes started and changed to Altium.
Now they're in China - well I can already see it now overpriced Chinese junk.

Oh well, Protel 99SE still is a damn good tool!

[Mechatrommer]

i think this may means getting cheaper labour cost in R&D, but keep curtomer support from "english or multilingual people" which doesnt require high education level. the same to manager which only very few to pay (maybe 1 or 2 people only), they need to keep the quality and standard in order among Chinese labour (another win for chinese people, they are going to learn how 1st world standard works). the lower the labour (in-house) cost, hence can sell their product at more competetive price. Since (if i'm not mistaken) Dave worked in "Altium Competitor" company, the Giant Altium decision will influence the company so badly. and i guess any competitors should restructure as well, to keep up with the race.

[EEVblog]

The low and middle end of the market is huge and devoid of a decent product.

I agree. There really not not much choice out there, and Altium know this.
They could easily have OWNED the low, mid, and high end spaces but they sadly did not chose to do so.

Dave.

[EEVblog]

Since (if i'm not mistaken) Dave worked in "Altium Competitor" company

No, I worked at Altium designing the Nanoboard hardware.

Dave.

[Ronnie]

There is this impression that China is now the centre of the world's economy and has suddenly acquired all the skills it needs for future growth.

Looks like China's economy will overtake the US by the end of 2020?   

[EEVblog]

The Altium move was discussed to todays AmpHour we just recorded.
So if you want some further details, be sure to tune in to this weeks episode.

Dave.

[mikemxyzzy]

Didn't Altium have problems with their Chinese VAR in 2005 or so? I seem to recall seeing an article about it.

[AdShea]

Well, I don't expect it to stay better than OrCAD for much longer now.  Time to work on gEDA I guess.

[slburris]

Hell yes, that is one huge mother of a mistake. A bit of a bugger for Dave too. Hope there was a bloody good redundancy.

This doesn't translate well for me here in the US.  Does redundancy
mean severance package?  "Bloody good" translates just fine though!

Scott

[EEVblog]

Yes, redundancy means severance package.

Dave.

[george graves]

Ohh - theamphour show is up!  Great - Listening now.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I agree. There really not not much choice out there, and Altium know this.
They could easily have OWNED the low, mid, and high end spaces but they sadly did not chose to do so.

I wonder if a group of ex-Altiummers will set up to go after this market....

I still use PCAD2006, which is one of the only PCB packages designed from scratch to use normal Windows conventions, and so has a very easy learning curve. It also has an open & documented file format so easy to write translators - if marketed at the right price it could have easily killed Eagle stone dead.

[Hypernova]

They probably want to make business partners in China and get China to use the new versions of Altium.

Oh the Chinese will use it don't you worry.

Tricky part is getting them to pay for it 

[McPete]

Damn, that sucks... What'll be left in Australia now? Sales and not a whole lot else? Execs with dollars-in-eyes at work here, by the sound of it.

My TAFE still teaches Protel 99SE... is that indicitave of industry in this country, or the way TAFE is funded?

Best of luck to you and your colleagues job-hunting Dave. I'm sure people of your experience will be snapped up by other employers.

[EEVblog]

I agree. There really not not much choice out there, and Altium know this.
They could easily have OWNED the low, mid, and high end spaces but they sadly did not chose to do so.

I wonder if a group of ex-Altiummers will set up to go after this market....

I still use PCAD2006, which is one of the only PCB packages designed from scratch to use normal Windows conventions, and so has a very easy learning curve. It also has an open & documented file format so easy to write translators - if marketed at the right price it could have easily killed Eagle stone dead.

Altium could kill Eagle stone dead within months and nab the entire hobbyist/hacker/maker/low cost market.
They chose not to because they can't see down to earth through the cloud....

Dave.

[EEVblog]

Damn, that sucks... What'll be left in Australia now? Sales and not a whole lot else? Execs with dollars-in-eyes at work here, by the sound of it.

My TAFE still teaches Protel 99SE... is that indicitave of industry in this country, or the way TAFE is funded?

Both. TAFE stupidly underfunded.
I know many companies still using 99SE because it did the job.
That version is/was also the standard in China, except that few actually paid for it.

Dave.

[Mechatrommer]

i've been in delusion with A!tium filter all this time. so now i can hear the true story. i just wish you luck dave.

[shadewind]

Well... I wonder what the future of hobbyist and semi-pro PCB software holds. I tried using EAGLE a bit but it's a very archaic program which is completely unintuitive...