Adobe 2008 Annual Report Download - page 26

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26
We believe that our Adobe LiveCycle server product family competes favorably against these companies and formats in
terms of the combined benefits of superior functionality, cross-platform visual page fidelity/reliability, multi-platform
capability, file compression, printing and security of documents expressed using Adobe PDF. We also believe that Adobe
PDF and its integration with XML, combined with the broad distribution of Adobe Reader on all leading hardware platforms,
provide a universal multi-platform solution that is more compelling than our competitors’ offerings.
Platform
Our Adobe Flash Platform technologies, including Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR, face competition from
Microsoft Silverlight, as well as alternative approaches to building RIAs – including Google Gears and JavaFX. Our Adobe
ColdFusion product family and our Adobe Flex Builder developer tool products face competition from major vendors
including Microsoft, IBM, BEA (a subsidiary of Oracle) and Sun. Our ColdFusion products also compete with several
technologies available today at no cost including the PHP and PERL programming environments that are available for the
Apache Web server.
Beyond the competitive Microsoft threats previously discussed, vendors such as Tibco, JackBe, Backbase and NexaWeb
offer potentially competitive solutions in the RIA market that we target with our open source Adobe Flex solution. We also
believe RIAs will make use of both open source Ajax frameworks and the open source Flex framework to create hybrid RIAs
in the browser, and we anticipate increased adoption of AIR as a development platform for Ajax developers. With our Flash
Media Server solution, we face competition from Microsoft with their Windows Media Server for Windows Media and
Silverlight, as well as Move Networks, Real Networks, Apple and solutions which utilize HTTP delivery of video and rich
media content via Web servers.
Our mobile and device solutions are influenced by evolving industry standards, rapid software and hardware technology
developments and frequent new product and technology introductions by companies or open-source initiatives targeting
similar opportunities. Technologies and products which could compete with Adobe Flash Lite include Java, Brew, Scalable
Vector Graphics, Wireless Application Protocol, Apple Mac OS utilized on the Apple iPhone, Microsoft Windows Mobile, as
well as solutions from the open source movement, vendors supplying clone versions of these products and technologies and
vendors which choose to exclude the use of our solutions and technologies on their devices.
We believe our Adobe Flash Lite solution competes favorably against these technologies and solutions due to the
distribution of Adobe Flash Player technology on a broad set of platforms, including PCs, cellular phones and consumer
electronic devices. We also believe our robust programming model and developer tools used to create video output for the
Flash Player and the large Flash developer community and ecosystem which utilize our tools, are key assets in our ability to
effectively compete in this market. Further, the rich expressiveness of Flash which provides the capability to deliver audio,
video, motion graphics, vector graphics and visual effects and results in rich user experiences and interfaces on mobile
devices, is a key differentiation when compared to the capabilities of alternate solutions.
In the past year, the mobile industry experienced many announcements and introductions of new mobile devices and
platforms – and we expect innovation and new announcements such as those seen in 2008 to continue in 2009. We view
these ongoing developments, including the Google Android project consisting of a group of more than 30 technology and
mobile companies that are working to develop an open mobile platform, as new opportunities to deploy our technologies and
solutions. Just as we maintain a philosophy of cross-platform support in the personal computer desktop world for operating
systems such as Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, Unix and Linux, we expect to continue to enhance our support for a
wide variety of mobile and consumer electronic platforms, and we intend to make our products and services available on
viable, new entrant platforms as well.
Print and Publishing
Our Print and Publishing product line targets many markets. In technical authoring and publishing, our Adobe
FrameMaker product faces competition from large-scale electronic publishing systems, XML-based publishing companies
such as PTC, as well as lower-end desktop publishing products such as Microsoft Word. Competition is based on the quality
and features of products, the level of customization and integration with other publishing system components, the number of
hardware platforms supported, service and price. We believe we can successfully compete based upon the quality and
features of the Adobe FrameMaker product and our extensive application programming interface.