Adobe Drives Creative Cloud Subscriptions to 1.4 Million

It’s unclear if it’s a testament to the the popularity of the cloud service or to the popularity of its products, but Adobe Creative Cloud increased its subscriber base by nearly 50 percent during the fourth quarter, which ended Nov. 29, 2013.

Adobe ended the quarter with 1.439 million Creative Cloud subscribers, a healthy addition of 402,000 subscribers during the quarter. Additionally, its Creative annualized recurring revenue grew to $768 million, while the Adobe Marketing Cloud saw 38 percent year-over-year growth to a total of $316.2 million.

Adobe users don’t have to be reminded that 2013 was the year the company completely changed its software delivery strategy, choosing to practically eliminate packaged software in favor of the Creative Cloud, a subscription-based service for Creative Suite software including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and plenty more—everything from desktop publishing to graphic design to video editing.

Although its move invoked the ire of many hardcore users, it appears that Creative Suite fans are, after all, willing to pay for their software on a subscription basis. Not that they have a choice if they want to continue using Adobe products, but you know your software is popular among graphic artists, videographers and photographers when they choose to stick by you even as they mutter complaints under their breath (or loudly on the Internet).

The success Adobe is having with Creative Cloud could help to fuel the SaaS fire when it comes to popular packaged products that are becoming SaaS applications. And with a growing channel that can help bring customers around to this growing method of software distribution, it only makes sense for even more software companies to consider abandoning packaged software in favor of a subscription-based method.