Adobe 2006 Annual Report Download - page 25

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 25 of the 2006 Adobe annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 125

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107
  • 108
  • 109
  • 110
  • 111
  • 112
  • 113
  • 114
  • 115
  • 116
  • 117
  • 118
  • 119
  • 120
  • 121
  • 122
  • 123
  • 124
  • 125

25
innovative features, our strong brand among users, positive reviews by industry experts, adoption of InDesign by
major accounts which are influencers in their industries and improved infrastructure support by the industry for
our overall solution.
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 Production Studio which contains these products, face competition from
companies such as Apple, Avid, Canopus, Discreet, Sonic and Sony. Our Adobe Premiere Elements software
product, which is targeted for use by hobbyists, faces competition from companies such as Aist, Apple, ArcSoft,
Avid, Broderbund, Cyberlink, Magix, Microsoft and Muvee.
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.
Knowledge Worker Solutions
With our Adobe Acrobat business, we are seeing an increase in competition from Microsoft. Microsoft has
announced its new, next generation operating system, called Windows Vista, which started shipping in late 2006.
Windows Vista includes a proprietary digital rights management technology and a new document format, called
XML Paper Specification (“XPS”), which competes with Adobe PDF. In addition, Microsoft recently released the
next version of its widely used Office product which offers a feature to save Microsoft Office documents as PDF
files through a freely distributed plug-in. This new PDF feature in Office competes with Adobe Acrobat. Given
Microsoft’s market dominance, XPS, the PDF feature in Office 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 Knowledge Worker Solutions market opportunity.
Our Adobe Acrobat product family also faces competition in the PDF file creation market from many clone
products marketed by companies such as AdLib, Active PDF, Ansyr Technology, 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 Adobe Acrobat Standard and Adobe Acrobat Professional 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. In the higher end of the electronic document market, Acrobat
Professional provides features which compete with other creative professional PDF tool providers, such as
Enfocus, Dalim, TeamPDF and Zinio. In addition, we are targeting the architecture, engineering and construction
electronic document collaboration market with our Acrobat Professional product market. The capabilities of our
product in this market compete with some aspects of Autodesk’s solution.
To address the threats from Microsoft and others, 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 process management.
Adobe Acrobat Connect (formerly Macromedia Breeze) faces competition from many Web conferencing
vendors, including WebEx and Microsoft Office Live Meeting. WebEx is a market share leader, and Microsoft
has steadily increased its marketing of Microsoft Office Live Meeting. To address the threats from Microsoft and
others in the Web conferencing space, we focus on providing a differentiated and enhanced user experience
through our ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player.