QBES has also accelerated sequential growth. There was a long period in which Intuit added 3,000 to 4,000 subscribers quarter to quarter. But in the last year, there was a sequential jump of 7,000 and third quarter 2013 numbers are up 5,000 units over the second quarter. Otherwise QuickBooks results continue to show the switch to the cloud. QuickBooks online subscribers hit 459,000, up 26.4 percent from 363,000 a year earlier. The number of desktop unit sales rose to 420,000, up only 2,000 from a year earlier but QuickBooks desktop subscribers climbed to 179,000, a 20-percent increase from 149,000. There was not much discussion about QuickBooks during this week's conference webcast as CEO Brad Smith saved most of the event for expected questions about the company reorganization and most of the rest were about TurboTax. He briefly mentioned growth in QuickBooks online and the iPad version of that offering.
QBES KICKS TICKING - USERS UP 28 PERCENT
Intuit's QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions kicks on ticking. I don't think we can use the rhyme - it takes a licking - unless it is to say Intuit is giving someone a licking. When the company's third quarter ended on April 30, there were 85,000 active QBES subscribers, up 28 percent from the 73,000 a year earlier. If this is really coming from the low end of the midmarket, it isn't helping VARs at the bottom of that arena.
