Adobe may introduce lower prices in India to curb piracy

With its piracy rates
touching the 95% mark in India, software major Adobe is already engaged in a
'price-differential pilot' in the Chinese region and would seriously look at
introducing the same in India, after evaluating the results in China.

“China is even worse
than India. Piracy rates of our software are touching the 98% mark over there.
In order to curb that, sometime back, we started this pilot of
price-differential in China. Though, I would not be able to divulge any detail
on this, we would certainly look at introducing the same in India after
evaluating the results in China,” explained Naresh Chand Gupta, Senior VP,
Adobe Systems.

While the overall
piracy figure India hovers at the 74% mark, for Adobe products the figure is
around 90% to 95%. In countries like India and China most of the piracy is often
fanned by the price-differential factor.

Even after working
closely with Nasscom and BSA for quite some time, companies like Adobe and
Microsoft have not been able to control piracy in this part of the world.
However, Adobe feels positive about things after actively going after the piracy
menace. “India does not contribute much in terms of sales revenues for us. But
still if we are able to bring down the piracy level from a present 90% mark to
80%, we would surely be doubling the revenues coming from India,” he added.

Experts in the industry opine that introduction of
price-differential in this market is a good way of tackling piracy as most of
the end-customers do not have the proper knowledge about the difference in
original and pirated products.

ZIA ASKARI