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SDL announced its OpenExchange platform in March 2010 and they recently published an
infographics with key figures about things like the number of developers that have enrolled
in the programme, the number of users of OpenExchange applications, the percentage of free apps
and so on. In this video, I will review and comment these figures and put them in perspective.
First, let's have a look at the Top-10 of the most downloaded applications: all are
free apps, which is hardly surprising, as people normally tend to prefer stuff they
can get for free. Now, if we look at the number of downloads, we can see the number 1 app
was downloaded about 4000 times, while number 10 was downloaded less than 1000 times.
These numbers are not really impressive when you compare them to the total size of the
user base, which SDL claims to be more than 185,000 translation professionals. So even
the most popular app was only adopted by a very tiny fraction, 1 or 2 percent, of the
total user base.
And we have to remember that we are talking about downloads here: just because you downloaded
an app doesn't mean you are actually using it, and in the case of apps that have been
updated several times, the same user may have also downloaded it several times; this means
the actual usage of OpenExchange apps is probably lower than what the download count suggests.
Another interesting fact about the Top-10 OpenExchange apps is that six out of ten were
written either by SDL, in which case the author appears as "SDL Community Developers", or
by SDL employees, which is the case of the second most popular app, Glossary Converter.
And this means that third-party developers have to compete against insiders, people who
work as programmers at SDL and probably have access to resources not available to outsiders.
Now speaking of third-party developers, let's have a look at the Top-5 paid apps.
Rather interestingly, what is listed as the most popular paid app is in fact not an app:
it's the Trados Studio manual written by Mats Linder. So it doesn't make any use of the
API and it's only included in the OpenExchange site because you can download an excerpt of
the manual as PDF.
If we look at "real" apps, we can see that the download counts are rather low: about
400 for number 2 and number 3, 150 for number 4 and 100 for number 5.
So when SDL claims that more than 500 developers participate in the OpenExchange programme,
only a handful of them are going to make any money on OpenExchange apps: if it's about
becoming rich and famous, they can probably forget about becoming rich and focus instead
on becoming famous.
Now if we look at what most of these apps do in Studio, we can see that these are standard
features in competing tools: for instance, support for MyMemory is a built-in feature
in memoQ, Déjà Vu and several other tools;
in memoQ, you can export your terminology to CSV, edit it in Excel and import it back:
it's more or less of less what the Glossary Converter app for Studio does.
SDLXLIFF to legacy converter: well, memoQ has a function called Export to Trados-compatible
bilingual DOC that does just that.
SDL XLIFF converter for MS Office: again, memoQ has Export to Two-column RTF. And the
list goes on.
So when SDL claims to be the only language technology company that has an app store and
development hub, to a large extent, it's because nimbler competitors like Kilgray are
able to provide the same features built-in, without the need for external plugins.
Three years ago, in March 2010, SDL claimed they were set to "revolutionize the translation
industry" with their OpenExchange platform.
Now in March 2013, they boast that "over the past year both numbers of developers and app
downloads have doubled". Well, we all know the marketing folks at SDL are never shy of
making bold statements, but I hope this video helped put all this in perspective.
Now what do you guys think: is OpenExchange really revolutionary, or is it just yet another
marketing gimmick. Let me know in the comments below!
Thank you for watching, be sure to subscribe to my channel for more similar content aimed
at translators, do hit that Like button if you found this video useful, and see you in
the next video!