Okay, this is just getting ridiculous.
Avid announced today that it will acquire Pinnacle,
one of Avid's few remaining competitors in media production technology.
At the ultra-high-end broadcast level, Avid already nearly owns the
market, and Pinnacle will complete that integration. Meanwhile, you can
expect Avid to make a big play for the consumer market with Pinnacle's
consumer-level offerings. Add this to Avid / Digidesign's purchase of M-Audio last year.
It's pretty much Avid vs. Sony vs. Apple at this point in the video
market. No tears shed here, because Sony's Vegas and Apple's iMovie and
Final Cut are in my mind preferable to Pinnacle's offerings.
One thing that is clear: Steinberg
just dodged a huge bullet. If Steinberg had been part of this deal,
Digidesign would almost certainly have wanted to kill Steinberg's Pro
Tools competitors. On the other hand, the buyout probably wouldn't have
happened at all: Pinnacle shrank when it sold off Steinberg to Yamaha,
making it riper for a takeover deal the company was likely courting
anyway.
In other news, CDM is proud to announce we've been acquired by Sony and
are discontinuing all our coverage of other products. Just kidding. I
think.