Adobe 2012 Annual Report Download - page 31

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rights management technology and a document format, called XML Paper Specification (“XPS”), which competes with Adobe
PDF. Given Microsoft's market dominance, the PDF feature in Office, XPS, and any other competitive Microsoft product or
technology that is bundled as part of its Office product or operating system or made freely available, could harm our overall
Acrobat market opportunity.
Our Acrobat product family also faces competition in the PDF file creation market from many clone products marketed by
companies such as AdLib, Active PDF, Apple, Global Graphics, Nuance, Software995, Sourcenext and others. In addition, other
PDF creation solutions can be found at a low cost, or for free, on the web.
For customers that use Acrobat as part of document collaboration and document process management solutions, where
electronic document delivery, exchange, collaboration, security and archival needs exist, our Acrobat product family faces
competition from entrenched office applications such as Microsoft Office and its integration with its SharePoint product. In the
higher end of the electronic document market, Acrobat Pro and Acrobat Pro Extended provide features which compete with other
creative professional PDF tool providers, such as Enfocus, Dalim and Zinio. Google's Google Apps set of products also provides
document creation and collaboration capabilities, including the ability to preview PDF documents, which can be used as an
alternative to our collaboration features in Acrobat.
To address these competitive threats, we are working to ensure our Adobe Acrobat applications stay at the forefront of
innovation in emerging opportunities such as PDF document generation, document collaboration and document security.
Digital Marketing
The markets in which our Digital Marketing business unit competes are growing rapidly and characterized by intense
competition. Our Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions face competition from large companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft,
Oracle, IBM, HP, salesforce.com and others, in addition to point product solutions and focused competitors. Additionally, new
competitors are constantly entering these markets, increasing competition. Certain of these competitors provide software on demand
to customers, generally through a web browser, or provide software that is installed by customers directly on their servers. In
addition, we compete at times with our customers' or potential customers' internally developed applications. Of the competitors
listed, no single company has products identical to our Digital Marketing offerings. Our Digital Marketing solutions compete in
a variety of areas, including: reporting and analytics; multi-channel marketing and optimization; online and social marketing; web
experience management and others.
In the market of Digital Marketing, we believe our creative tools heritage differentiates us from our competitors; we have
worked closely with marketing and creative customers for thirty years. We also believe we have market leadership in the digital
marketing market, with current customers representing leading brands in the world including markets such as financial services,
global media, retail and auto manufacturing. Our comprehensive solution to serve the needs of customers in this market extends
further than any other company addressing the opportunity; we integrate content and data, analytics, personalization, web experience
management, campaign management and social capabilities in our Adobe Marketing Cloud, surpassing the features of any
competitor. Most importantly, we provide a vision for our digital marketing customers as we engage with them across the important
aspects of their business, extending from their use of our Creative Cloud, to how they manage, deliver, measure and monetize
their content with our Adobe Marketing Cloud.
Our current principal competitors for our reporting and analytics offerings include companies that offer web analytics and
optimization services on-demand such as ComScore (which recently acquired AdXpose and Certifica), Google, IBM (which owns
Coremetrics, Unica and Tealeaf), Microsoft, WebTrends, Xiti and Yahoo!. We also compete with software and business intelligence
vendors, such as Infor (which owns Epiphany), Nielsen/NetRatings (which is a part of the Nielsen Online Unit of the Nielsen
Company) and SAS Institute. In addition, we also compete with online marketing service providers, such as DoubleClick (owned
by Google), Microsoft Advertising (formerly aQuantive when acquired by Microsoft) and 24/7 Real Media (acquired by WPP).
Our Insight products compete with channel analytics providers, such as AsterData (owned by Teradata), Clickfox, Netezza (owned
by IBM), QlikTech and Truviso.
In addition to competing with large search, display and social companies, our AdLens products and multi-channel campaign
management offerings, including those obtained through our acquisition of Efficient Frontier, compete with point solutions
providers such as Bluekai, Criteo, DecideDNA (owned by WPP), DoubleClick Search (owned by Google), IgnitionOne, Kenshoo
and Marin Software.
Our Target solutions compete with multivariate testing providers, such as Kefta (owned by Acxiom Digital), Memetrics
(owned by Accenture), Monetate, Optimizely, Optimost (owned by HP) and [x + 1]. Our Target products and solutions compete
with intra-site search vendors and merchandising solutions providers such as Autonomy (owned by HP), Celebros, Endeca
Technologies (owned by Oracle), FAST Search and Transfer ASA (owned by Microsoft), Fredhopper, Google, Nextopia Software
and SLI Systems.
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