The Future of QuickBooks Desktop
If you go to the Intuit website, it is difficult to find information about the desktop products. So what is in store for the QuickBooks Desktop products?
From a marketing and research standpoint, the majority of Intuit’s efforts have been focused on the Online product. The reasons for this include:
Online generates more in annual revenue per customer. Desktop versions are collapsing. Intuit sold 10% fewer units in 2014, and 22% fewer in 2015.
Since Online is a global platform, it significantly increases the total addressable market.
QuickBooks Online enables the seamless purchase of additional services.
As of May 31, 2016, access to QuickBooks Payroll Service, Live Support, Online Backup, Online Banking, and other services through QuickBooks 2013 will be discontinued. In order to keep those services, one must upgrade to QuickBooks 2016.
Dan Wernikoff, Intuit Senior Vice President, recently stated “I can’t see a time when we are not doing a desktop release.”
It appears as though Intuit will continue to produce and support the desktop versions of QuickBooks in order to keep loyal customers happy until they can be persuaded to move to the online version. Rest assured, however, Intuit will do everything it can to convince you to move to the cloud.
As of this writing, Intuit has sold off it's Quicken product. They have discontinued the desktop product for Apple. My guess is the next product to disappear is the Pro version, then a few years later the Premier version. I do think it will take some time for them to expire the Enterprise version.
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