Adobe 2004 Annual Report Download - page 18

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18
TriVista Technologies, and Ulead Systems. In addition, we face competition from device, hardware, and camera
manufacturers such as Apple Computer, Canon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Nikon, Sony, and others as they try to
differentiate their offerings by bundling their own digital imaging software, or those of our competitors. Similarly,
we face potential competition from operating system manufacturers such as Apple Computer and Microsoft if they
integrate hobbyist-level digital imaging and image management features in future versions of their operating
systems. Finally, we face potential competition from Open Source products, including Gimp for Linux.
We believe we compete favorably against other mid-range digital imaging, digital video and consumer-focused
image management software applications with our Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Premiere Elements, and
Adobe Photoshop Album products due to strong consumer awareness of our brand in digital imaging and digital
video, our relationships with significant OEMs, positive recommendations for our products by market influencers,
our increased focus on the retail software channel, and strong feature sets.
In professional digital imaging, software applications compete based on product features, brand awareness, and
price sensitivity. We face direct and indirect competition from a number of companies including Corel and
Macromedia. We are an industry leader and compete favorably with our Adobe Photoshop product due to high
awareness of the Photoshop brand in digital imaging, the positive recommendations for our Photoshop product by
market influencers, the features and technical capabilities of the product, and our ability to leverage core features
from our other established products.
Applications for digital video editing, motion graphics, special effects, audio creation, and DVD authoring face
increasing competition as video professionals and hobbyists migrate away from analog video and audio tools
towards the use of digital camcorders and digital video production on their computers and DVD systems for rich
media playback. Our Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition, Adobe Encore DVD, and Adobe Premiere Pro software
products, as well as the Adobe Video Collection which contains these products, face competition from companies
such as Apple Computer, Avid, Canopus, Discreet, Pinnacle Systems, Roxio, Sonic Solutions, ULead Systems and
Sony. Our Premiere Elements software product, which is targeted for use by hobbyists, faces competition from
companies such as Aist, ArcSoft, Broderbund, Cyberlink, Magix, Microsoft, Muvee, and Pinnacle Systems.
Adobe After Effects is a leader in professional compositing and visual effects due to its strong feature set, and
its integration with our other products that helps create a broad video editing platform for our customers. In
professional digital video editing, we are an industry leader on the Microsoft Windows platform with Adobe
Premiere Pro, and compete favorably due to our strong feature set, our OEM relationships, and the integration with
our other products to create a broad digital video publishing platform for our customers.
Intelligent Documents
As we broaden the scope of products and solutions offered with our Intelligent Document Platform, we face
increased competition from entrenched office applications, makers of products which provide clone capabilities of
our Acrobat product, electronic forms solution providers, emerging products/technologies, and potentially,
enterprise collaboration system providers. Additionally, current office applications and content
creation/management tools that use HTML, Macromedia Flash, Macromedia FlashPaper, Microsoft InfoPath,
Microsoft Word, Tagged Information File Format (“TIFF”), and various XML-based formats for electronic
document distribution provide alternate solutions to customers, and indirectly compete with our Intelligent
Documents products and the use of Adobe PDF.
For document generation solutions — specifically, the desktop and server-based PDF file creation markets —
Adobe Acrobat and our server solutions such as Adobe Acrobat Elements Server, Adobe Acrobat Distiller Server,
and Adobe Document Server face competition from many Acrobat clone products marketed by companies such as
AdLib, Active PDF, Ansyr Technology, eHelp Corporation, Global Graphics, Scansoft, Software995, Sourcenext,
and others. In addition, other PDF creation solutions can be found at a low cost, or for free, on the Web. Additional
competitors in the server-based document generation market include DocuCorp, Document Sciences, Exstream,
Formscape, and StreamServe. However, some PDF creation solution providers in the market today use technology
from us, licensed as Adobe PDF Libraries, to implement the PDF creation capabilities of their products or solutions.