Forum Moderators: phranque
Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.
Flash? Illustrator? Freehand? Photoshop? Indesign?
What will go where?
Whose next? Quark?
<added> This could be VERY big news for Flash designers. The one product with the potential to rival HTML - but needs whipping in shape - maybe a new pair of eyes might get the bottom of those frustrating issues: spidering, compatibility, usablility, validity, acessibility... </added>
[edited by: limbo at 9:45 am (utc) on April 18, 2005]
We hope they use talents from both companies and make something useful but the "corporate junk" could come out of it instead.
Maybe Adobe will part it out to someone like Oracle or Microsoft?
Too few people are starting to be in control of too many resources in this business ..
thank heavens for the gimp
[edited by: Leosghost at 10:34 am (utc) on April 18, 2005]
Will any products be eliminated or phased out as a result of this transaction?
Adobe and Macromedia are committed to serving the needs of our combined customers. The companies are largely complementary, and thus the amount of competition between us is limited.
from here (PDF) [adobe.com]
i can envisage PhotoShop becoming a stand alone product, and some sort of hybrid of ImageReady and FireWorks being developed as a seperate product. Same for freehand/illustrator
ImageWorks? FireReady? CS3MX2005? ;)
Quark, I am most sad to say, is over. Adobe's InDesign is the new standard. (Look, Quark hasn't had a meaningful update in its software in years.)
There are many more mergers to come
This is not a merger, It is an aquisition. Adobe Systems has bought Macromedia.
Quark, I am most sad to say, is over.
I didn't want to risk hijacking this thread with a Quark vs. Indesign debate - so iv'e started one here [webmasterworld.com] ;)
Bundled together Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver
why would they do this when they have both imageready and fireworks available?
It will take some time getting used to 'Adobe Dreamweaver' for sure.
Yes. However, the cost of software will go down if the essentials are bundled together.
Maybe, we can get a all-in-one software:
- WYSIWYG Editor
- Image Retouching
+ all they need now is a FTP s/w to fix Dreamweavers "1 in 5 success rate" and thats it!
(I run a private equity publishing group in my day job - so I see this bubbling up all the time)
Merger vs. acquisition
I wasn't being a pedant (well a bit maybe) - but I think it was important to note that Adobe now control Macromedia and that they are not merged in partnership - it will have a large impact on MM products, but I wonder how much impact it will have on the current Adobe ones. CS is so powerful, if they can acheive that much depth with DW FH FW and the like, we may be in for some nice changes.
I wonder what is going to happen to Homesite, formerly known as Allaire Homesite, my favourite text editor? It is now owned by MM and shipped hidden on the Dreamweaver installation disc. I surely hope Adobe doesn't give up and squish everything into DW.
They just bought their way into multimedia by this writers interpretation. They just didn't have the product they needed, now they do. Make or buy, they choose to buy.
They just bought their way into multimedia
They've been in multimedia a long time. Maybe you guys haven't noticed but Photoshop and Acrobat are a small part of the Adobe portfolio. The biggest chunk of profits come from video products like Premiere, After Effects, Audition etc. They had almost no competition in some sectors there. The puny Edius and the (now threatened) Pinnacle Edition were no match; the only serious competition came from Avid.
True, as webmasters our focus tends to be on the products we use - like Flash, Acrobat etc., but these are not the be all and end all of the Adobe-Macromedia existence.
Also, don't forget Adobe bought XML software maker [news.com.com], Syntrillium [findarticles.com], OKYZ [macmerc.com], Jave based workflow company -QLink [today.java.net], GoLive (Cyberstudio) [macobserver.com], and others like Ceneca and a major sound editing software company whose name escapes me at present. OK, not all those acquisitions were in the past year but they're becoming a Microsoft of multimedia, as I said earlier, and that's too much power in one company. Expect less innovation and more monetisation of existing product portfolios i.e. you and me pay more.
[edited by: oddsod at 2:24 pm (utc) on April 18, 2005]
While true, their Board must believe future growth is in the Macromedia product line. Man, they just paid 3.4B for a company that had sales last year of 370M, there must be some real gold nuggets in there.
real gold nuggets in there
Flash streaming video is just starting to come on in a big way. It is going to keep butt over real, ms media, and quicktime. Akamai's recent acquisition of Speedera is greatly going to speed this process.
Flash streaming video combined with Adobe's video editing tools is going to be huge.
Expect less innovation
I'd be amazed if either company could manage less innovation. They may be innovating on their new products, but the stalwarts of each company (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Freehand) have been mired for years with bug fixes still waiting from two versions back.
The only good that can come of this is easier file transfers between Illustrator and Freehand, but why expect that when there is so much else left undone? :(
[edited by: tntpower at 3:05 pm (utc) on April 18, 2005]
