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Adobe Systems
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Adobe Systems Incorporated (pronounced a-DOE-bee ) is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray into rich Internet application software development.
Adobe was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language.
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Encyclopedia
Adobe Systems Incorporated (pronounced a-DOE-bee ) is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray into rich Internet application software development.
Adobe was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. The company name Adobe comes from Adobe Creek, which ran behind the house of one of the company's founders. Adobe acquired its former competitor, Macromedia, in December 2005, which added newer software products and platforms, such as Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex, to its product portfolio.
As of January 2007, Adobe Systems has 6,677 employees, about 40% of whom work in San Jose. Adobe also has major development operations in Seattle, Washington; San Francisco, California; Ottawa, Ontario; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Newton, Massachusetts; San Luis Obispo, California; Hamburg, Germany; Noida, India; Bangalore, India; Bucharest, Romania.
Since 1995, Fortune has ranked Adobe as an outstanding place to work. Adobe was rated the fifth-best U.S. company to work for in 2003, sixth in 2004, 31st in 2007, 40th in 2008, and eleventh in 2009.
In 2007 Adobe ranked 9th on the list of largest software companies in the world.
In May 2008, Adobe Systems India was ranked 19th in great place to work in India. In October 2008, Adobe Systems Canada Inc. was named one of "Canada's Top 100 Employers" by Mediacorp Canada Inc., and was featured in Maclean's newsmagazine.
History
Adobe's first products after PostScript were digital fonts, which they released in a proprietary format called Type 1. Apple subsequently developed a competing standard, TrueType, which provided full scalability and precise control of the pixel pattern created by the font's outlines, and licensed it to Microsoft. Adobe responded by publishing the Type 1 specification and releasing Adobe Type Manager, software that allowed WYSIWYG scaling of Type 1 fonts on screen, like TrueType, although without the precise pixel-level control. But these moves were too late to stop the rise of TrueType. Although Type 1 remained the standard in the graphics/publishing market, TrueType became the standard for business and the average Windows user. In 1996, Adobe and Microsoft announced the OpenType font format, and in 2003 Adobe completed converting its Type 1 font library to OpenType.
In the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the consumer software market with Adobe Illustrator, a vector-based drawing program for the Apple Macintosh. Illustrator, which grew from the firm's in-house font-development software, helped popularize PostScript-enabled laser printers. Unlike MacDraw, then the standard Macintosh vector drawing program, Illustrator described shapes with more flexible Bézier curves, providing unprecedented accuracy. Font rendering in Illustrator, however, was left to the Macintosh's QuickDraw libraries and would not be superseded by a PostScript-like approach until Adobe released Adobe Type Manager.
In 1989, Adobe introduced what was to become its flagship product, Adobe Photoshop for the Macintosh. Stable and full-featured, Photoshop 1.0 was ably marketed by Adobe and soon dominated the market.
Arguably, one of Adobe's few missteps on the Macintosh platform was their failure to develop their own desktop publishing (DTP) program. Instead, Aldus with PageMaker in 1985 and Quark with QuarkXPress in 1987 gained early leads in the DTP market. Adobe was also slow to address the emerging Windows DTP market. However, Adobe made great strides in that market with release of InDesign and its bundled Creative Suite offering. In a failure to predict the direction of computing, Adobe released a complete version of Illustrator for Steve Jobs' ill-fated NeXT system, but a poorly produced version for Windows.
Despite these missteps, licensing fees from the PostScript interpreter allowed Adobe to outlast or acquire many of its rivals in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In December 1991, Adobe released Adobe Premiere, which Adobe rebranded to Adobe Premiere Pro in 2003. In 1994, Adobe acquired Aldus and added Adobe PageMaker and Adobe After Effects to its production line later in the year; it also controls the TIFF file format. In 1995, Adobe added Adobe FrameMaker, the long-document DTP application, to its production line after Adobe acquired Frame Technology Corp. In 1999, Adobe introduced Adobe InCopy as a direct competitor to QuarkCopyDesk.
Top competitors
According to Hoovers Adobe's top competitors are:
Company events
1992
- Acquired OCR Systems, Inc.
1999
2003
- May: Acquired Syntrillium Software, adding Adobe Audition to its product line.
2004
- December: Acquired French company OKYZ S.A., makers of 3D collaboration software. The acquisition added 3D technology and expertise to the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform.
2005
* December 12, 2005: Acquired its main rival Macromedia in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion adding: Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Captivate, Adobe Acrobat Connect (formerly Macromedia Breeze), Adobe Director, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Flash, Macromedia FlashPaper, Adobe Flex, Macromedia FreeHand, Macromedia HomeSite, Macromedia JRun, Adobe Presenter, and Macromedia Authorware to Adobe's production line.
2006
- October: Adobe acquires Serious Magic, makers of Visual Communicator and video blogging application, Vlog It!
- November: Sr. Vice-President of Corporate Marketing Melissa Dyrdahl retires from Adobe to co-found startup Bring Light with fellow Adobe alum Drew McManus
- December: The firm's headquarters buildings in San Jose received three Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certifications.
2007
- January: Released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to assist photographers in managing digital images and doing post production work. The product was intended as a competitor to Apple's Aperture in the RAW image editing market.
- May 2007: Acquired Scene7, which makes an image processing and display platform used in many retail sites on the web.
- July: Adobe released Adobe Soundbooth. This product was not intended to replace the existing Adobe Audition but merely to provide an environment for professionals not specializing in audio.
- August 3, 2007: their plans to discontinue development of Authorware, the “visual authoring tool for creating rich-media e-learning applications for delivery on corporate networks, CD/DVD, and the Web.” Authorware was one of the development tools acquired in the Macromedia/Adobe merger. This was replaced by Adobe Captivate.
- October 2007: Acquired Virtual Ubiquity, with its online word processor, Buzzword.
- November 12, 2007: CEO, Bruce Chizen resigns. Effective December 1, he is to be replaced by Shantanu Narayen, Adobe's current president and Chief Operating Officer. Bruce Chizen is expected to serve out his term on Adobe's Board of Directors, and then continue in a strategic advisory role until the end of Adobe's 2008 fiscal year.
- In December 2007, Apple Inc. released a security update for Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server to address vulnerabilities in the Adobe products Flash and Shockwave and in Tar, a GNU utility. Among the problems addressed were the ability to "execute arbitrary code" and to "surreptitiously initiate a video conference".
2008
- April: Adobe releases Adobe Media Player. Many videos and tutorials available for entertainment or training.
- 27 April: Adobe discontinues development and sales of its older HTML/web development software, GoLive in favour of Dreamweaver. Adobe offers a discount on Dreamweaver for GoLive users and supports those who still use GoLive with online tutorials and migration assistance.
- 1 June: Adobe launches , a series of web applications geared for collaborative work.
- Creative Suite 4 which includes Design, Web, Production Premium and Master Collection came out in October 2008 in six configurations at prices from about USD $1,700 to $2,500 or by individual application. The Windows version of Photoshop includes 64-bit processing.
- December 3, 2008: Adobe lays off 600 of its employees (8% of the worldwide staff) citing the weak economic environment.
2009
- Creative Suite 4 sales seem to be low
Corporate leadership
| Executive Board | | Charles M. Geschke | Co-Chairman of the Board | | John E. Warnock | Co-Chairman of the Board | | Shantanu Narayen | President & Chief Executive Officer (2005 Compensation: $1.08 M USD) | | Karen Cottle | Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary | | Mark Garrett | Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer | | Donna Morris | Senior Vice President, Human Resources | |
| Kevin Lynch | Senior Vice President - Experience & Technology Group, Chief Technology Officer | |
Products
Adobe's products include
Financial information
Adobe Systems entered NASDAQ in 1986. Adobe's 2006 revenues were $2.575 billion USD.
As of February 2007, Adobe's market capitalization was roughly $23 billion USD; as of August 2007, its shares were trading on the NASDAQ for around $40 USD, with a P/E ratio of about 49 and EPS of about $0.82.
As of March 2008, Adobe's market capitalization was roughly $18 billion USD; its shares were trading on the NASDAQ for around $33 USD, with a P/E ratio of about 27 and EPS of about $1.21.
Revenue
2000s
| Fiscal year | Revenue |
|---|
| 2008 | $3.58 billion | | 2007 | $3.158 billion | | 2006 | $2.675 billion | | 2005 | $1.966 billion | | 2004 | $1.667 billion | | 2003 | $1.295 billion | | 2002 | $1.165 billion | | 2001 | $1.230 billion | | 2000 | $1.156 billion |
1990s
| Fiscal year | Revenue |
|---|
| 1999 | $1.015 billion | | 1998 | $0.895 billion | | 1997 | $0.912 billion | | 1996 | $0.787 billion | | 1995 | $0.762 billion | | 1994 | $0.676 billion |
Criticism
Adobe has been extensively criticised for its pricing practices, with retail prices being as much as twice as high in foreign countries than in the domestic market.
See also
External links
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