Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says it’s tougher to make a free smartphone app than a high-priced piece of enterprise software. He should know, because his company, known for its costly AutoCad design and engineering software, has been making a foray into mobile development.
“People are more demanding for a low-cost consumer thing than they are for [expensive] profressional products,” explained Bass in an interview. “The cheapest things have to be the easiest to use,” he said, noting that people won’t read a manual or attend a training class for a free app.
According to Autodesk, the company’s mobile apps have 100 million users, compared to just 15 million users for its enterprise desktop software.
Bass added, “Enterprise software sucks.” He said that “less expensive means easy to use, more expensive means really difficult to use. We have to remedy that!”
