Autodesk SketchBook Mobile nearing 1 millionth download

Autodesk’s Manufacturing business unit held an analyst event last week in Portland, OR. Lots of interesting stuff under non-disclosure that I can’t write about until we get the all-clear. Not under NDA is the fact that right about now the 1 millionth buyer will download Autodesk’s SketchBook Mobile for the iPhone. That’s 1 million people, CAD users and not; artists, designers or normal people, using what could be considered an engineering tool. The average age of downloaders: under 16. How cool is that?!

I don’t have an iPhone, but saw a quick demo of SketchBook Mobile last week. It opens to a blank, black canvas. You can select brushes, a pencil, spray gun or other drawing tool from a tiny palette on the bottom of the screen, customize it with a color wheel and other controls and start on your creation. Put stuff on layers, change colors, add textures … A trained artist can create stunning works of art — clear in some of the examples Autodesk showed, such as superimposing stylized people on a bus stop or designing retro advertisements. A novice like me? It’s fun but it clearly takes practice to create anything recognizable. I’m not the type to sketch on paper napkins, but I can definitely see the appeal for those who do.

The revenue impact to Autodesk is likely negligible.The full app is available for $2.99 and a less-featured version is downloadable for free, so the max of $3 million in new revenue for a $2.3 billion company isn’t even rounding error.

However, the business impact could be enormous. 1 million users is a remarkable addition to the potential audience for Autodesk’s more traditional design tools. Further, the fact that most who have downloaded the app are quite young means that these people will be buying and recommending software purchases for a very long time to come.

Note: Autodesk did pay for travel and accommodations at the event; however Schnitger Corp. is not compensated by Autodesk or Apple for the contents of this blog.