Sony buys Sonic Foundry products; Sound Forge, Acid and Vegas

May 7, 2003

On PCWorld.com we can read
that Sony has bought several products of Sonic Foundry. The company sold its
Vegas multitrack audio and video editing system, its Sound Forge audio editing
softeware and Acid music production application. Sony Digital Pictures paid
about 18 million US dollar for the company that could hardly survive in this
hard and occupied business.

Sonic
Foundry found it difficult to compete with larger companies such as Apple,
Adobe, and Avid Technology, which publish competing software, Buinevicius
said.

"Anyone who knows this industry knows that it's tough
to fight the whales; they have big marketing budgets," Buinevicius said.
"Their products do similar things, and without a big marketing budget,
it's hard to get the message out to users about the types of things your
product does that are different from what products from the big whales
do."

The company's desktop software line was bringing in
about $15 million in annual revenue, he said. MediaSite Live sales have a
run rate that amounts to about $2 million yearly. The company is eager to
explore emerging markets that the bigger firms do not dominate.

Sonic Foundry will continue operations, focusing on Web-based, rich-media
presentation and database software. Read the entire story at PCworld.com here. Discuss their software in our Audio Forum.

Source: PCworld.com