Intuit Abandoning Quicken
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From: tmp on 17 Jan 2010 16:11 Gordon Potter wrote: > OnLine Quicken in a few weeks, Software 5 years max. > > I expect Quicken 2011 for Windows to be the last version - unless they > choose to skip 2011 and make a 2012 version. > > I doubt there will be any new Mac versions. > > http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2010/tc2010018_451437.htm > > - > Email will be: > 2Cybers at gmail-dot-com > > Gordon Potter > Atlanta, GA > USA It will be interesting to see what actually happens vs what they are saying. It wouldn't shock me if that 5 years stretched to 10 and beyond. I am a long time Quicken user (and still use it), but recently have been trying out Mint. It's nice in some ways, but if I had to start paying for it by subscription or whatever with its current feature set, I would most likely drop it. I mean, I like it, but it doesn't give me enough added value beyond what I already get with Quicken to justify actually paying for it. So they do have some work to do...
From: Mr.Jan on 17 Jan 2010 17:18 Mint is pretty basic. It is very good at telling you account balances and I sometimes use it to verify my daily activity but it is pretty basic. The current incarnation of Quicken Online, the one they are eliminating, is very very basic. Plus Mint has Yodlee as a competitor at no cost. Geezeo is also coming along nicely and is free. So, they have to improve or they won't be able to charge. I know Quicken ends support after 3 years and part of that is force you to buy another version but they also have to support the banks and financial institutions to support Quicken also. I can see where they would have to upgrade to keep up with the financial institututions. Quicken can support both the disks and the online version. Why not? Still, I can see them making much more money with the online version.
From: John Carter on 18 Jan 2010 15:49 "Mr.Jan" <jan.hertzsch(a)gmail.com> wrote in news:26165974-a937-4449-b28c-2b7413e5cce5(a)b10g2000vbh.googlegroups.co m: > Mint is pretty basic. It is very good at telling you account > balances and I sometimes use it to verify my daily activity but it > is pretty basic. The current incarnation of Quicken Online, the > one they are eliminating, is very very basic. Plus Mint has Yodlee > as a competitor at no cost. Geezeo is also coming along nicely and > is free. > > So, they have to improve or they won't be able to charge. > > I know Quicken ends support after 3 years and part of that is > force you to buy another version but they also have to support the > banks and financial institutions to support Quicken also. I can > see where they would have to upgrade to keep up with the financial > institututions. > > Quicken can support both the disks and the online version. Why > not? Still, I can see them making much more money with the online > version. > I have not tried Mint, so don't know how it is presented to the user. One thing I can see for sure is the screen real-estate on Mint being sold to advertisers. This potentially can bring in more revenue to Intuit than Quicken desktop does today. That added to smaller support costs for Mint results in huge profitability, which is the metric of the day. Advetising that doea not stand a chance to be shown on our desktop screens. Would you accept advertising in a product you paid for? Not in my case. The profile of a Mint user, in my mind's eye is that of a younger user that deposits only that part of the paycheck to pay rent and utilities (those bills that are best paid by check), and the rest goes into the pocket for day-to-day expenses and fun. These users want a quick means of check book balancing and not much more. The proper ads on the Mint screen could generate a lot of business for theose advertisers. This may be over simplified, but it certainly doesn't fit the profile of most of us.
From: mazorj on 19 Jan 2010 12:33 "Robert Neville" <dont(a)bother.com> wrote in message news:4dc6l5tflqlhs6c05gab5otb9pi53dm8pq(a)4ax.com... > "Mr.Jan" <jan.hertzsch(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >>They will keep the disks as long as people buy them. When people >>don't, they will move away. That isn't arrogance, that is commerce. > > The issue isn't the distribution method of the software. The issue is the > architecture. The current Quicken product manager wants to migrate the > Quicken > base from an architecture where the data and processing is performed on a > local > computer to a cloud based solution where data and processing is done at > some > central location. > > The cloud model has two huge benefits for Intuit - it eliminates > distribution > costs and it locks consumers into a monthly/annual subscription model. The > arrogance comes from believing that consumers want this kind of > architecture and > business model when the evidence to date is pretty clear they don't. It > also > ignores the very real security/reliability issues with cloud based > processing > for sensitive/critical functions. > > Intuit could eliminate the majority of their distribution costs by going > to 100% > electronic distribution. They proved that by the "emergency" release of > the > QD2009 patch late last year. That wasn't a patch - it was a complete full > up > version of QD 2009. They also distribute electronically on Amazon if you > look > hard enough. > > They apparently feel the benefits of sharing revenues with retailings on > CD > distribution outweigh the costs. My bet is that we'll be seeing Mint CDs > in > stores at some point that follow the World of Warcraft model. Essentially > a > token CD that includes a trial online subscription. Good analysis. However, instead of the WOW CD model, I'd like to see them follow the slightly different security apps model. Buy the inexpensive disk or download (the "razor") and you get full, locally stored functionality plus the frequent updates over a subscription period. Then you pay annually to keep it going (the "blades"). That's basically what they're already doing with Quicken, except that some of the features stop working after three years. Change that to a 1-year drop dead cycle and they can have us on the annual upgrade treadmill just as the security vendors do. And of course it's all done cheaply through downloading. No need to sell us a new box or mail us an unlockable CD every three years. Some users would abandon Quicken but as long as the annual "upgrade" subscriptions are reasonably priced, most would just grumble a bit and stay with the program. It's understandable where the Intuit VP is coming from. Top executives are under a lot of pressure to keep growing the enterprise. Desktop Quicken is a mature market, both in the business sense and figuratively because of the age of its customer base. There's no more headroom for double-digit growth. That's when you start hearing talk about "new paradigms" and "taking it to the next level". The flaw that I see in his thinking, though, is the difference between functionality and content. The app provides the functionality. Any competent team of coders can write that and it can be distributed cheaply online almost as a commodity. If Quicken as we know it goes away, someone will fill the void. It may not be as slick or comprehensive as Quicken, but it will suffice for the trailing adopter crowd. Except for the expensive and lucrative accounting suites, what really is going to distinguish mass-market personal financials vendors and keep the cash rolling in is providing the additional content, i.e., all the outside data like stock prices and interest rates and market trends that gets used by the app and is interfaced with your locally held personal data. Online, content is king. We already know that any kind of website can crackle with fancy bells and whistles, but if the content isn't there, the eyeballs ain't gonna go there. And they're definitely not going to pay for the privilege. So the real challenge for Intuit/Mint under their new model is whether they can get a commanding market lead in furnishing paying users with financials content that is usable by some form of front-end software. Any competent web surfer already can get virtually all the data he needs for free. So tying all the functionality and data together in a pretty, convenient package at mint.com may or may not get them where they want to be. One smart thing that Intuit is doing - if we ignore the gaffe of announcing the end of life so soon - is they're giving themselves a long lead time to let users catch up to their vision of how it's supposed to work. Whether it will work remains to be seen. Having said that, I still see a long-term usefulness in continuing to offer discrete "you own it" versions of Quicken as a gateway to pull in new customers and keep the ones they have. They already use Quicken as a gateway to additional paid financial services. There's no reason that the package can't be refocused to a big array of mint.com services. Given the much bigger cost of providing and maintaining the over-arching system, plus what they dole out in advertising and PR to attract new customers, the incremental cost of continuing to offer desk-top versions of Quicken as a gateway channel seems like it would be money well spent. They would do well to remember how Bill Gates initially blew off the Internet browser market because the Web wasn't a core part of MS business strategy at the time. Now it's the massively dominant gateway between MS and its customers - and they are now the 800-pound gorilla in the browser market. (Well, maybe down to a 600-pound gorilla now, but the point still stands.)
From: Robert Neville on 19 Jan 2010 19:15
"mazorj" <mazorj(a)verizon.net> wrote: >So the real challenge for Intuit/Mint under their new model is whether they >can get a commanding market lead in furnishing paying users with financials >content that is usable by some form of front-end software. Any competent >web surfer already can get virtually all the data he needs for free. So >tying all the functionality and data together in a pretty, convenient >package at mint.com may or may not get them where they want to be. Right - but that's what MSMoney tried to do. The last few versions of Money were tightly integrated with the web - it wasn't optional like Quicken.com. The only argument you can make for that being a sucessful model was that MS didn't have enough of a critical mass with Money to make the hybrid strategy work. Maybe Intuit does, but I don't think so. |