Adobe 2014 Annual Report Download - page 12

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enabled devices via app stores, and from various open source initiatives. We believe our greatest advantage in this market is the
scope of our integrated solutions, which work together as part of Creative Cloud. With Creative Cloud we also compete favorably
on the basis of features and functionality, ease of use, product reliability, value and performance characteristics.
Professional digital imaging, drawing and illustration products are characterized by feature-rich competition, brand
awareness and price sensitivity. Competition in this market is also emerging with drawing and illustration applications on tablet
and smartphone platforms. The demand for professional web page layout and professional web content creation tools is constantly
evolving and highly volatile. In this area we face direct and indirect competition from desktop software companies and various
proprietary and open source web-authoring tools. Our Flash technologies face competition from alternative approaches to building
rich content and web applications such as JavaFX, HTML5, native OS application programming environments and Unity.
The needs of digital imaging and video editing software users are constantly evolving due to rapid technology and hardware
advancements in digital cameras, digital video cameras, printers, PCs, tablets, mobile phones and other new devices. Our imaging
and video software offerings, including Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects and Premiere, face competition from established and
emerging companies offering similar products. We also continue to face competition from new and free products, including web
services and mobile/tablet applications that compete directly with our Aviary offerings.
New image editing applications for mobile devices and tablets with features that compete with our professional products
are also emerging as adoption of these devices grows. Our consumer digital imaging and video editing offerings are subject to
intense competition, including customer price sensitivity, competitor brand awareness and competitor strength in OEM bundling
and retail distribution. We face direct and indirect competition in the consumer digital imaging market from a number of companies
that market software that competes with ours.
In addition, we face competition from device, hardware and camera manufacturers as they try to differentiate their offerings
by bundling, for free, their own digital imaging software, or those of our competitors. Similarly, we face potential competition
from operating system manufacturers as they integrate or offer hobbyist-level digital imaging and image management features
with their operating systems. We also face competition from smartphone and tablet manufacturers that integrate imaging and video
software into their devices to work with cameras that come as part of their smartphone and tablet offerings. In addition, new social
networking platforms such as Facebook (including Instagram) and portal sites such as Google and Yahoo! are becoming a direct
means to post, edit and share images, bypassing the step of using image editing and sharing software. Online storage and
synchronization are becoming free and ubiquitous. Consumers in particular will be encouraged to use the image/video editing
software associated with those sync/store products, thus competing with our software.
Competition is also emerging with imaging and video applications on smartphone and tablet platforms. Competitors are
extending their products and feature sets to platforms such as Apple’s iPhone and iPad, and other smartphone and tablet devices.
Similarly, new cloud-based offerings continue to emerge which offer image editing and video-editing capabilities, as well as social
and sharing features.
As customers such as publishers and media companies increase their desire to deliver their assets to new platforms such
as mobile devices and tablets, we expect new and existing companies to continue to offer solutions that address these challenges
that are competitive with our Digital Publishing Suite. Many design agencies are building capabilities to offer such solutions, and
companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google offer an alternative format and business model for the delivery of newspaper and
magazine content to mobile devices.
The nature of traditional digital document creation, storage, and collaboration has been rapidly evolving as knowledge
workers and consumers shift their behavior increasingly to non-desktop workflows. Competitors like Microsoft, Google, Box and
Dropbox all offer competitive alternatives to our Acrobat business for creating and managing PDFs. In addition, other PDF creation
solutions can be found at a low cost, or for free, on the web. 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.
As electronic signatures with EchoSign are quickly becoming a core element of digital documents, competitors have been
jumping in to take advantage of the growing space. DocuSign, Citrix, and others are incorporating competitive e-signature
technology into their platforms.
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, IBM, Oracle,
salesforce.com, SAP, SAS, Teradata and others, in addition to point product solutions and focused competitors. Additionally, new
competitors are constantly entering these markets. Some of these competitors provide SaaS solutions to customers, generally