Adobe CS3, Mac sales

The anticipated launch of Adobe's Creative Suite CS3 will have a measurable impact on Mac sales next year, according to research firm Piper Jaffray. The company spoke with 50 Adobe customers, finding that 24 percent expect to purchase a new Mac within two quarters of the release of Adobe's CS3, which will run natively on Intel-based Macs and is expected to launch in April of 2007. "Current versions of Adobe's creative products, such as Creative Suite, Photoshop, etc., do not run at full efficiency on Intel-based Macs," wrote senior analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray in a research note obtained by MacNN. "The bottom line is that there is significant pent-up demand for Intel-based Macs among the Adobe creative pro community." Adobe creative pro customers cannot currently run Adobe apps at full effiency on an Intel-based Mac until CS3 is released, and so are biding their time until the update arrives.

Of the 50 Adobe users interviewed, 10 percent said they have already upgraded to an Intel-based Mac. Adobe has a creative pro customer base of around 3 million, according to Munster, which suggests a likely surge in Mac sales following the release of CS3. "Assuming 10 percent have upgraded to a new Mac over the last 2 quarters, we arrive at a figure of 300,000 (150,000 per quarter) Adobe creative pros that have purchased Intel-based Macs," the analyst wrote. "If we assume that our forward estimates are also based on 150,000 per quarter Macs that are sold to Adobe's creative pro customer base, we would come to a figure of 600,000 Macs sold to Adobe creative pros by the time CS3 ships in April of 2007. This leaves us with 2.4 million Adobe creative pro customers that are yet to move to a new Mac."

The analyst notes that if 24 percent of these customers upgrade to a new Mac within the first 2 quarters following the release of CS3 -- the June and September quarters -- industry watchers can expect 288,000 Macs sold to Adobe creative pros in each of those two quarters. "That would be 138,000 more Macs per quarter than we had been anticipating, as we had been using an estimate of 150,000 Macs per quarter to Adobe creative pros. 138,000 more Macs sold to Adobe customers per quarter would add 7 percent ($0.04) to our earnings-per-share estimate in both the June and September 2007 quarters."

by MacNN Staff