Adobe 2002 Annual Report Download - page 46

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A number of companies currently offer one or more products that compete directly or indirectly with more than
one of Adobe’s Digital Imaging and Video products. These companies include Apple Computer, Microsoft, Roxio,
and Ulead.
ePaper
As we broaden the scope of our ePaper products and solutions, we face increased competition from entrenched
office applications, PDF-based clones 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, 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 Adobe’s ePaper 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 Distiller Server and Adobe Document Server face
competition from Acrobat clone products such as those from Ansyr Technology, Global Graphics, and other smaller
PDF creation solutions that can be found at a low cost, or for free, on the Internet. Additional competitors in the
Document Generation market include StreamServer, Optio, and Formscape. However, many PDF creation solutions
in the market today use technology from us, licensed as Adobe PDF Libraries, to implement the PDF creation
capabilities of their products or solutions.
We have recently announced our intent to provide different versions of our Acrobat desktop product in 2003 to
meet the needs of different types of users. Providing a PDF creation-only version of Acrobat may allow us to
achieve our goal of broader proliferation of paid-for Acrobat software, as well as compete more effectively with
low-end PDF-creation product companies such as Global Graphics. The creation of a new high-end professional
version of Acrobat could directly or indirectly position Adobe against other creative professional PDF tool
providers, such as Enfocus, Lantana, TeamPDF, and Zinio.
For Document Collaboration and Document Process Management solutions, where electronic document
delivery, exchange, collaboration, and archival needs exist, our Adobe ePaper product family faces competition
from entrenched office applications such as Microsoft Office. In addition, some content management vendors
provide collaboration and business process management capabilities that could directly or indirectly compete with
our offerings, although we view our solutions in these areas as an extension of those supplied by such vendors.
In many of the ePaper market opportunities that Adobe is targeting, Microsoft has, over the past few years,
attempted to improve its products and their capabilities. These areas include the collaborative document review,
document security, and electronic document distribution capabilities of its Office suite. In addition, Microsoft has
recently announced new XML and .NET-based product initiatives codenamed XDocs, ePeriodicals, and Jupiter that
are positioned to be part of the launch of the next version of Microsoft Office. These initiatives, targeted for 2003
availability, indicate Microsoft may be planning to have new electronic form, electronic document distribution,
eBook, and related functionality like that in Adobe Acrobat that could directly or indirectly compete with our ePaper
products that provide similar capabilities.
In addition to Microsoft’s XDocs initiative, we also face competition from Cardiff, Shana, and PureEdge for
electronic forms solutions. Similarly, we face competition for Document Process Management solutions from
workflow solutions vendors such as MetaStorm, Staffware, and Ultimus.
We believe the Adobe ePaper product family competes favorably against these companies and formats in terms
of the combined benefits of superior functionality, file compression, visual page fidelity/reliability, multi-platform
capability, printing and security of documents expressed using Adobe PDF.
Looking to the future, electronic document systems targeting enterprises that use emerging standards such as
XML and Microsoft’s .NET initiative are being developed and will likely be adopted. We are working to ensure that
compatibility exists between these formats/platforms and the Adobe PDF format, as well as our Acrobat software
products and other Adobe ePaper applications.