Two companies who have not kept up with times – Adobe Systems and Macromedia – are hooking up. Adobe is buying Macromedia for $3.4 billion in stock. The deal is proof that there is little or not growth organic growth left in the old Silicon Valley. Desktop publishing, and subsequently Web 1.0 publishing are passe. These two companies have not developed killer apps for either broadband or wireless enabled comm-puting. They missed the whole blogging thing, and have not produced a must have killer app in recent times. They are becoming increasingly irrelevant in digital worlds where free programs like iPhoto and Picasa are setting the tone on the desktop. Don’t expect innovation as a result of this deal – this is a deal to boost the revenues and maybe profits.
- Russell Shaw on what this deal means for VoIP.
- Marc Canter: “The rape and pillage is finally complete”
- Russell Beattie on the mobile implications of the merger: I think as the handsets mature, Flash will become a better way to create entertainment-oriented content than Java just like it has in the browser. (He’s wrong, but what do I know!)
- More from company FAQ
Not kept up with the times? Picks and shovels man, picks and shovels. Both companies have been incredibly profitable over the last decade and continue to do so. I see this deal as a huge win for two companies whose products are so good that they’ve never had to give them away in order to get people to use them. While it may be true that Adobe hasn’t built themselves into a strength on the web as they have in the print world, that’s what the buy is for… Macromedia has.
mike i have a different feeling about this. i am not sure that 2+2=22 here. I think these are sign of the times and most companies from the old desktop/clientserver era are struggling. i think this web thing is a lot more complicated than people realize from a business perspective. more later
Om, Macromedia’s Flash franchise will be the platform of choice for Mobile gaming and advertising. Check out their deals with the major handset vendors like Samsung. Adobe is the one that was behind, and needed this acquisition to redress. The long-term money will be in rich-media, not text apps, and blogging falls in the text app category. Sramana
Om – I have to disagree with you here. It’s all about mobile, and right now Flash is the new game in the land of mobile. Samsung, Nokia are signed up and you know the folks in Schaumburg are going to be signing up too very soon for mobile Flash. Let’s face it, this is a stroke of genius on the part of the Adobe folks who clearly don’t want to be only relevant on the desktop like the 800 lb. gorilla Mister Softee.
Este si que es Noticion…… Adobe compra Macromedia por una suma nada menos que 3.400 millones de dólares, ahora cabe esperar que sucederá con esa fusión.
¿Se unirá la potencia de Photoshop junto a Fireworks y Image Ready desaparecerá?,
¿Dreamweaver predominara por encima de Golive?,
¿Flash tendrá soporte para el formato SVG?,
¿se potenciara el uso de Coldfusion? y finalmente
¿PDF tendrá soporte SWF para unos documentos mas vistoso y así competir y ganar el campo a Power Point? .
Son muchas las interrogante que se espera de esta fusion lo bueno de esto es que las dos compañias lideres en el mercado de la grafica, digital y web se han unido para quizás mejorar los productos ya hablados, esto conlleva además de que posiblemente la nueva compañía (no se cual será su nombre pero me imagino algo) tendrá el monopolio absoluto en el campo de la gráfica.
Sea bueno o malo me espero con ansias las mejoras que traerán Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash y Illustrator. No queda más que decir que con Coreldraw 12 aun estoy alucinado pero que le deparara a futuro?.. Y que sucedería si a Micro$oft se le ocurre comprar dicha compañía…
rich media is not going to work in the long run. rich media is thinking from an Internet 1.0 perspective. macromedia is treating phones as a pc extension. wait till this thing doesn’t work, and when network realities meet handset feature overkill and we will have problems. i think these guys are going to realize that pretty soon!
My first reaction was to start looking for alternatives to any Adobe or Macromedia application. It’s going to take a while for any major change to happen, and by then they will be even further behind the times.
I’m an architecture/urban planning/design student in my last year of college. I’m actively involved in the community, and I’ve been to many design firms. I have never — NEVER — come across a firm who doesn’t use adobe and/or macromedia products for essential everyday production. Every computer I’ve ever used — my personal computers, PCs and Macs at school, etc. etc. — has had Adobe and Macromedia software installed. All of it was bought and paid for. Where is your evidence that Adobe and Macromedia aren’t successful software developers? Where is your evidence that they are struggling in a market which I see them dominating? What makes you think that they won’t continue to dominate the market when the closest competitors are years away from matching their feature set?
chris … i am not sure i am saying they are unsuccessful. i think your role and usage of their software shows that they were might successful in the last generation of technology and now this one which is more web centric and broadband enabled. just my two cents
I’m sorry if I just sound argumentative, I guess I didn’t make my point clearly. I don’t think that Adobe or Macromedia are companies focused exclusively on output for the web. And there’s always going to be a great big world out there for print media, broadcast media, and so on — especially in the business world, not just for consumer use. I’m sure that the “web 2.0” concept promises very exciting changes in the way we digest media, but it will be decades, at least, before electronic media begins to supplant print media in its more traditional roles. Can you imagine a library of congress that exists _only_ in a digital format? Any university library? Any of the myriad of event flyers, concert posters, billboards, and banners that are ubiquitous in any decent-sized city? When do you think that digital business cards will become more popular than actual paper cards — they’ve been talking about it for 10 years, yet business card companies and the people who design them (on Adobe software) are doing just fine.
But let me respond even more directly to the issue: I think you’ll agree that Adobe and Macromedia design software that design professionals use. What can you imagine might replace Adobe and Macromedia in this role? It’s true that content management systems do some of the things that dreamweaver does, and do it better even. But do you actually design the web site on a server-side application? No, you do it on Dreamweaver.
Imagine that there was a server-hosted application (or even a client-side script download) that had all of the features required to design and test web sites, the way that dreamweaver does. How fast do you think such a program would run? What’s the point of clogging those pretty broadband pipelines with Ajax scripts, or worse, PHP, and all the associated HTTP traffic, when there’s no need for a server-based solution? A machine-specific, pre-compiled executable will always be more efficient. Why send data over hundreds or thousands of miles of wire when it’s six inches from your desktop’s hard drive to its processor?
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point. Are all of our laptops and desktops destined to become thin clients for server-hosted apps? Why bother when PCs are becoming so powerful? If I run a graphic design firm, it’s silly to think that I would go to http://photo-edit.com and pay $50 a month for a slow server-hosted photo editing program.
I guess I don’t see how Adobe/Macromedia is obsolete. At all. I’m racking my brains, trying to think of how I could get by without Adobe software. Use GIMP? Please. And how would I create my portfolios, without InDesign (or Quark, which I’m sure you’d also call a dinosaur). All the advertisements at the top of each page on your site, you think they would be as easy to make, or as cheap, without adobe? Everywhere I look, I see Adobe and Macromedia, and I don’t see a new paradigm coming to replace that.
Oh, and how are iPhoto and Picasa even remotely related to Photoshop, Illustrator, VersionCue, etc.?
I got it! I was missing the point completely. You want Macro/Adobe to write new programs, to keep up with trends in technology. You think that if they don’t compete with iPhoto, Flickr, etc., then they’ll somehow fade into the background and never be important again. But you’re wrong– Adobe doesn’t need to compete with new “killer apps” on the forefront of technology trends.
Adobe/Macromedia has focused on one sector — professional and semi-professional design. They have virtually no competition in this sector, just like Microsoft has virtually no competition for Word, Excel, and so on. If Microsoft and Adobe/Macromedia are thusly dinosaurs, then I’d like you to tell me when they will become extinct. I’ll be waiting.
Roland Tanglao’s how can you say that we dont need Flash when we have Laszlo? Doesnt Laszlo use Flash as its UI layer?
These large companies may not be creating the newest most cutting edge programs and utilities, but its kind of silly to dismiss them.
-Josh
hey JD look forward to that beer and lets plan on getting together when possible. drop me a note so i can get in touch. best