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How many purchase / use video editing software per year?
Hello! Thanks for your question about how many purchases or use video editing software per year.
The short version is that there are no direct statistics that provide the number of video-editing software users per year. Despite searching extensively through multiple types of sources, and asking peers for alternate search strategies, we cannot find the requested information and there is no way to triangulate it without having some overlapping estimations.
To arrive at estimated number of users, I had to use the annual revenues of the top video-editing software companies and used their figures to derive the number of users, by dividing their revenues with the average price of the software. Based on my calculations, I estimate the number of Adobe Premiere users to be 9 million users, Final Cut Pro users to be 32K and actual Avid users at 25K.
Below you will find a deep dive of our findings.
METHODOLOGY
My colleague had searched for all relevant information pertaining to the number of video-editing software users broken down into the different brands. However, there is no published data that has revealed the number of video editing software users.
To overcome this, she had to search for each company annual reports of the major video-editing companies to search for possible breakdowns of the number of subscribers. Again, this is not disclosed by all of the companies.
ADOBE PREMIERE
Users now need to use Adobe Premiere via the Creative Suite users, and users who were using it via the Adobe Creative Cloud are being migrated to use via the Creative Suite. This means users have access to more Adobe products, from Photoshop to After Effects, Dreamweaver, etc. However, users can still opt to pay for a single application or software instead in the Creative Suite membership.
Paid membership of Adobe Creative Suite stood at 9 million subscribers in 2016. However, there is no breakdown by the number of users by apps. Adobe had stated last year that the Creative Cloud total addressable market is at $17 billion. This year, in an investor presentation slide the total addressable market for 2019 is $19.5 billion, which consists of $10 billion of core products, $2.9 billion market expansion and $6.6 billion value expansion.
Adobe Premiere is considered a software for advanced users, which included a Hollywood blockbuster movie, "DeadPool", used it for its post-production editing.
FINAL CUT PRO
For Final Cut Pro, which is owned by Apple Inc, and is only available on the Mac Book, there are no disclosed information on the number of users or its revenue. Hence, I had to extrapolate data and made estimations based on a number of assumptions.
A survey by TV network, PBS, found that of all filmmakers respondents, 76% had used Final Cut Pro. US Bureau of Labor Statistics stated that in 2015 there were 27,660 film and video editors, and worldwide, there are at least 14,400 documentary professionals. Putting this into context, this would mean that at least 31,965 film and video editors use Final Cut Pro.
AVID VIDEO RESOLUTION (AVR)
Avid has announced for their financial year 2016, Avid announced that they had 25,000 paying subscribers to the MediaCentral platform in 2015, out of total 32,000 users. While the MediaCentral platform has a wider cast of software applications, AVR is a part of it.
Avid is mostly used by post-production professionals.
SONY VEGAS
Sony Vegas, owned by Sony Creative Software, was bought by Magix Software GMbH in 2016. However, as both are not part of publicly traded companies, we were not able to determine their number of subscribers.
FROST MARKET RESEARCH ON THE GLOBAL NON-LINEAR VIDEO EDITING MARKET
Frost & Sullivan estimated that in 2014 the global non-linear video editing market for broadcast, post-production professionals was at $1.61 billion and would reach $3.1 billion in 2020.
THE PROSUMERS VIDEO EDITING MARKET
While the brands mentioned above cater to the professionals and hardcore amateurs, this would leave out the largest chunk of video editing market, the prosumers who are consumers and producers at the same time. Consider these compelling statistics:
- Most people spend 2.7 times more time on mobile than on desktop (2 hours 25 minutes on mobile vs 52 minutes on desktop)
This means that at least 87 million internet users upload their videos online. Most would use some form of a video editing tool, including free tools.
Based on my search on AppAnnie and Mobbo which track mobile apps performance in the US, the following are the top 3 video editing paid mobile apps:
Android Paying Apps:
iPhone Paying Apps:
The other apps listed by AppAnnie in the Photos and Videos category are mainly photo editors.
CONCLUSION
Although we were unable to provide an exact number of paid users for Adobe Premiere, as Adobe Premiere is part of the Adobe Creative Suite solutions, where Adobe had disclosed that it had 9 million paying subscribers. Apple does not disclose its Final Cut Pro subscribers, and as such, we had calculated it to be used by filmmakers and post-production professionals at 32K of users. Avid had disclosed that it has 25K of paying subscribers. After extensive research, no information can be found on the number of Sony Vegas subscribers.
In addition to the professional and semi-professional users above, prosumers make up the largest chunk of video editors, where at least 30% of US internet users have uploaded a video online. Based on this, some of the paid mobile apps used by prosumers are mobile based apps such as Viva Video Pro which has 1.48 million installs.
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