The 2009 State of Adobe Address
............. INTRODUCTION
Chicago Motion Graphics Festival
Adobe at Flexcamp & Chicago Convergence & AE Expressions
............. SIFTING SOFTWARE
1985 Adobe is Founded as a Font company.
1991 Adobe adds Premier to it's repitior of Photoshop + Illustrator.
1992 Macromedia founded by merging Authorware (elearning) + Director (web animation)
1994 Adobe acquired PageMaker & After Effects
1995 Macromedia buys Freehand (Vector illustration)
1996 Macromedia buys FutureSplash and made it into Flash (web animation)
1997 Macromedia buys Dreamweaver (webpage editor)
1999 Macromedia buys Cold Fusion and all the server products that came with it
2000 Adobe buys GoLive, their first product in the web space
2001 Macromedia sells Shockwave.com to Atom Films (later to MTV)
2003 Macromedia buys Breeze (online presentations, now Acrobat Connect)
+ RoboHelp (elearning, now Captivate)
+ Flash Printer (now FlashPaper, a flash-based competitor to PDF)
2005 More computers worldwide had the Flash Player installed than any other Web media format, including Java, QuickTime, RealNetworks and Windows Media Player
+ Flash Player with of 99% browsers, with installed versions
+ Flash Lite 2, the next generation of their Mobile platform
+ Flex 2, providing the business login to move Flash into the web application space
+ Apollo, which became AIR, which moves flash into the desktop application space
+ FlashPaper (now discontinued) to compete with PDF
+ FLV in the web video space
............. TRANSITIONAL STRATEGY
MXNA became Adobe Blogs like Genesis Project
Extensive API Documentation beceom DevNet,
including: Exchange + Adobe Labs
Shockwave.com + other content ventures becaome Adobe TV
MAX became MAX
the Macromedia Marketing Mantra was:
"It will work for your customers, it better already be working for you."
In 2005, rIght after the merger, Stephen Elop, then CEO, opened Macromedia's annual MAX convention with the "Flash Platform Roadmap":
He began, "First, Macromedia had committed to do a better job than ever before to listen to and work with developers to ensure that we create the best products and technologies possible. Macromedia met this promise through a new synchronous product development methodology—where the product team members met with customers onsite to get their feedback on how they use the products and to solicit feature requests."
Hidden Features create Rolling Buzz
Interactive Video Object Manipulation
Case Study: Kuler
a Website/Product + a Community + a Palette
Case Study: Pixel Bender
an ActionScript Class + a Plugin API + a Animation API
Creating things like VISP: Realtime Motion Graphics written in AIR (Flash + Pixel Blender)
More:
PaperVIsion 3D + Content Aware Scaling + Advanced Technology Labs
............. A BROAD OUTLOOK
............. THE NEW ROADMAP : THE NEW MAP is THE NEW ROAD
Flex & LiveCycle for logic
includes Filemaker, cold fusion, flash media server, flexbuilder,
Creative Suite for content
includes photoshop, illustrator, after effects, ...
Acrobat & Flash for delivery
incldues AIR, Acrobat Connect, Flash Lite, FLV, ...
............. STANDARDS
"In a market in constant flux, stadards rule"
The Flash Platform & The Acrobat Family
If you consider every person that has used a PDF or SWF to be a customer, then Adobe has the largest audience of any technology vendor, with the possible exception of google.
Their not bigger than the Internet... but that could change:
"The number of mobile phone users world soared to over 3.3 billion by the end of 2007, equivalent to a penetration rate of 49 percent, the International Telecommunications Union has said in a report." "estimated to reach about 61% by the end of 2008."
Where as the Internet reaches about 22% of the world population, as of 2008.
Print + Business + Web Design & Application + Web Media & TV + Mobile + Desktop OS
ITunes is still the new Radio
and Google is still the new Newspaper
but Adobe seems to want to be the new everyting else....