Maidenhead: Consumers ‘far from ready’ to buy software in the cloud, says Corel

UK consumers are not yet ready to buy their desktop software from the cloud, with almost two-thirds of respondents preferring to purchase software in a physical format, according to new research released from software firm Corel. 

2,006 consumers were questioned on their software buying habits by Leadership Factor on behalf of Corel and the survey revealed that 37.7% of respondents would rather buy software from a retail outlet and 25.2% preferred to buy software online but in a physical format. Just 1.8% said they would rather rent, lease or subscribe to the software by paying a monthly or annual fee, while 28% preferred to download software direct to their PC from the internet.

Almost half of respondents (46.6%) admitted that when software firms spoke about 'the cloud', they didn’t fully understand what it means.

“One day a majority of people will use the cloud to rent or lease their software, but the research clearly shows that we are far from ready for that at the moment,” said Amanda Bedborough, Corel's executive vice president of global sales. “While many businesses are comfortable with using the cloud to purchase their software, consumers still want the choice as to how they buy software and do not want to be forced to rent software before they feel ready.”

87.4% of consumers said they would rather have a choice in what format they bought software and when asked what would prevent them from renting or leasing software from the cloud, 75.4% said the main reason was not wanting to commit to an on-going payment.

Other reasons given for not renting or leasing software were:

• wanting to be able to upgrade software on their own terms - 75.3%
• feeling like they pay more that way - 66.3%
• not wanting to lose the ability to open files if they choose to stop renting/leasing/subscribing to software - 65.6%

“The cloud has enormous potential for consumers to buy software – quicker delivery time, easy upgrades, additional features and more flexibility – and is undoubtedly the future,” continued Amanda Bedborough, Corel. “But many UK consumers don’t like the idea of an on-going payment and are simply more comfortable with owning a physical product. While it might be easier for software firms to sell their products via the cloud, to try and impose this on consumers is simply wrong.”