Autodesk Inc 's

The markets for our products are highly competitive and subject to rapid change. We strive to increase our competitive separation by investing in research and development, allowing us to bring new products to market and create exciting new versions of existing products that offer compelling efficiencies for our customers. We also compete through investments in marketing and sales to more effectively reach new customers and better serve existing customers.

Our competitors include large, global, publicly traded companies; small, geographically focused firms; startup firms; and solutions produced in-house by their users. Our primary global competitors in the PSEB, AEC and MFG segments include Adobe Systems Incorporated, ANSYS, Inc., AVEVA Group plc, Bentley Systems, Incorporated, Dassault Systèmes S.A. and its subsidiary Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp., Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI), Intergraph Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hexagon AB, MSC Software Corporation, Nemetschek AG, PTC, 3D Systems, and Trimble Navigation Limited.

Our M&E segment also competes with a wide range of different companies from large, global, publicly-traded companies to small private entities. Large organizations that produce products that compete in some or all of our markets include Adobe Systems Incorporated, Apple Inc., Avid Technology, Inc., SONY Corporation and Technicolor, among others. The media and entertainment market is highly fragmented with complex interdependencies between many of the larger businesses. As a result, some of our competitors also own subsidiaries that are our customers or our partners in developing or bringing to market some of our solutions. In addition to traditional competitors in developed economies, we encounter new competitors in emerging economies.

The software industry has limited barriers to entry, and the availability of computing power with continually expanding performance at progressively lower prices contributes to the ease of market entry. The industry is presently undergoing a platform shift from the personal computer to cloud and mobile computing. This shift further lowers barriers to entry and poses a disruptive challenge to established software companies. The design software market is characterized by vigorous competition in each of the vertical markets in which we compete, both from existing competitors and by entry of new competitors with innovative technologies. Competition is increasingly enhanced by consolidation of companies with complementary products and technologies and the possibility that competitors in one vertical segment may enter other vertical segments that we serve. In addition, some of our competitors in certain markets have greater financial, technical, sales and marketing and other resources than we do. Because of these and other factors, competitive conditions in these industries are likely to continue to intensify in the future. Increased competition could result in price reductions, reduced net revenue and profit margins and loss of market share, any of which could harm our business.
We believe that our future results depend largely upon our ability to better serve customers by offering new products, including cloud and mobile computing products, whether by internal development or acquisition, and to continue to provide existing product offerings that compete favorably with respect to ease of use, reliability, performance, range of useful features, continuing product enhancements, reputation, price and training.