Author Topic: Circuit Studio Dead? (again!)  (Read 80640 times)

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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Circuit Studio Dead? (again!)
« Reply #225 on: December 23, 2024, 12:53:54 am »
If they don't care about developers, and they don't care about investors, then what do they care about?

They do care about money. The article below has sentences like "Monetizing beyond PCB design" and "With stronger uptake of higher-value subscription seats the US$500M target will be reached with only 75,000 to 90,000 seats on subscription. However, 100,000 seats on subscription remains an independent aspirational goal."

That document was from just before the Renesas takeover, but it seems that Renesas want a return on their MegaBuck investment too.

The point is that 100% of the Altium investors only cared about the Altium product and it's revenue, obviously.
Now what percentage of the Renesas investors care that much about what profit Altium makes given that Altium makes up a single digit percentage of Renesas's revenue?
Altium has always been a debt free cash cow, and it makes sense to continue to run the division in that way. But the focus of Altium would now be internal stakeholders at Renesas and not the Renesas shareholders.
This change potentially gives more leeway in future product pricing than it did before.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2024, 12:55:27 am by EEVblog »
 
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Offline Doctorandus_P

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Re: Circuit Studio Dead? (again!)
« Reply #226 on: December 23, 2024, 02:55:37 am »
... given that Altium makes up a single digit percentage of Renesas's revenue?

I never realized how big Renesas is. Total Assets 2.8 Trillion Yen = 18Billion USD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renesas_Electronics

Altium was USD437 Million in 2023, so that boils down to just 2.3%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altium

It does make me wonder what Renesas wants to do with altium. I once read that some Orcad users did not want to switch to altium, because they got their tools for free from their chip vendor. Maybe Renesas wants to go that way too. It's either something like that or they may be interested in FPGA tools  :-DD

But whatever it is, Circuitmaker seems like flee poo on the scale.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Circuit Studio Dead? (again!)
« Reply #227 on: December 23, 2024, 02:19:08 pm »
If they don't care about developers, and they don't care about investors, then what do they care about?

They do care about money. The article below has sentences like "Monetizing beyond PCB design" and "With stronger uptake of higher-value subscription seats the US$500M target will be reached with only 75,000 to 90,000 seats on subscription. However, 100,000 seats on subscription remains an independent aspirational goal."

That document was from just before the Renesas takeover, but it seems that Renesas want a return on their MegaBuck investment too.

The point is that 100% of the Altium investors only cared about the Altium product and it's revenue, obviously.
Now what percentage of the Renesas investors care that much about what profit Altium makes given that Altium makes up a single digit percentage of Renesas's revenue?
Altium has always been a debt free cash cow, and it makes sense to continue to run the division in that way. But the focus of Altium would now be internal stakeholders at Renesas and not the Renesas shareholders.
This change potentially gives more leeway in future product pricing than it did before.
Indeed.
I’m hoping they kinda do with Altium what the various silicon vendors have done with IDEs for their MCUs, seeing the software as a way to enable sales of their hardware by offering some or all of their toolchains for free.
 

Offline voltsandjolts

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Re: Circuit Studio Dead? (again!)
« Reply #228 on: December 23, 2024, 02:32:16 pm »
Surely Altium software is too generic for that, it couldn't be locked down to Renesas components only and remain usable.
More likely everybody's Altium will try to push Renesas at you.
 

Offline tooki

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Re: Circuit Studio Dead? (again!)
« Reply #229 on: December 23, 2024, 03:10:09 pm »
I didn’t mean that they’d limit it to their own components. It wouldn’t be usable in such a form. Just that by seeing it as something complementary/synergistic to their real product, rather than seeing it as a profit center in its own right, they might subsidize it in part or in full.

Consider how ARM (IIRC) subsidizes PlatformIO, even though PlatformIO supports countless non-ARM MCUs, too. Or how Analog Devices subsidizes LTspice, but in no way restricts it to only working with their components. (Sure, TI chooses to release their spice models only for PSpice and/or TINA, but absolutely nothing is stopping them from releasing LTspice models if they wanted to.)

Or how Microchip and ARM both have free standard versions of their toolchains (MPLAB X and Keil, respectively), but sell upgraded ones for those who need every iota of performance, or things like safety certification.
 
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Offline EEVblog

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Re: Circuit Studio Dead? (again!)
« Reply #230 on: December 24, 2024, 07:27:58 am »
I didn’t mean that they’d limit it to their own components. It wouldn’t be usable in such a form. Just that by seeing it as something complementary/synergistic to their real product, rather than seeing it as a profit center in its own right, they might subsidize it in part or in full.

There is much greater chance of that now than there was when Altium was on it's own.
It did happen once though, I was actually there in the room when Altium founder Nick Martin announced they would slash the price by 80% (from $10k to $2k) and said "there is no going back to high priced software".
Didn't last that long until the shareholder pressure forced the price back within a year or so. And then Nick got forced out and was replaced with Aram who ran the company like a money printing machine for the shareholders (of which he was the biggest).

The thing with Altium, and why it was always debt free, was that it was a just a software product run by a fairly lean team. Unless Renesas change that model, if they wanted to run it as a cost neutral division, then they could easily drastically drop the price.
Without seeing the recent internal numbers, my guess would be that 80% drop could easily happen again.
I'm not predicting it, just noting that's it's possble and way more likely than before the buyout. That would be really cool.
 
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Offline johnboxall

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Re: Circuit Studio Dead? (again!)
« Reply #231 on: December 30, 2024, 02:51:06 am »
Haven't used CS since 2017, but my AD license is about to expire.
They offered me another year of AD standard for AU$1500+GST as I had an expired CS license.

That seems very cheap.

They're hyper-keen. Will let them stew on it for another week.

Just to finish up, Altium came to the party with a price I didn't think was achievable. Now for 11 and a half months of peace and quiet.
 
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