Adobe profits fall, but firm optimistic
MAKERS OF ALL THINGS Flash and PDF, Adobe, said on an earnings call last night that although the firm's fiscal second quarter profits and sales were down, things were still a fair bit better than Wall Street had predicted - so, pass the Bucks Fizz.
Adobe's CFO, Mark Garrett, said the firm earned $126.1 million or 24 cents per share in the three months ended May 29, a 41 per cent slump from $214.9 million the previous year. But although revenue plunged 21 per cent to $704.7 million, that was still above the $694.8 million predicted by Thomson Reuters.
Garrett told media and analysts that Adobe will continue to flash its cash in areas like its Creative Suite - Photoshop and allied tools - and Acrobat - PDF creation software and reader - products, both of which were still driving growth. Trying to tap into the enterprise market, Garrett added that Adobe will also be putting an emphasis on products like LiveCycle.
Earlier in the week, Adobe announced it would be selling subscriptions to its previously free Acrobat.com web site, which was seen by analysts as a step towards offering software as service rather than just packaged products. These apparently will be targeted at professionals and small businesses who want to work together online.
"Overall, we are pleased we were able to deliver solid profit margins and earnings despite the weak macroeconomic environment," said CEO Shantanu Narayen, adding that "dynamic media continues to be a key focus for Adobe." Narayen's optimism continued with his declaration that companies including ARM, NVIDIA, Broadcom, Intel, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm are all busily working away to optimise Flash player for their respective processors and platforms.
He added that Adobe would be bringing Flash Player 10 to smartphones imminently and that "multiple partners" had already been kitted out with early versions of the release. "We expect to release a beta version for developers at our MAX Conference in October," Narayen confirmed, saying Google's Android OS, Nokia's Symbian OS, Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS and even the new Palm Web OS would be among the first devices to support web browsing with the latest and greatest Flash player.
Narayen also discussed Adobe's initiative to connect digital living room devices using Flash, something announced back in April. These, he said, would include flash for "high definition video and rich applications to Internet connected televisions, set-top boxes, Blu-Ray players, and other devices." OEMs will purportedly start shipping these come the first quarter of 2010.
Adobe reckons it will see next quarter revenues between $665 million to $715 million, bracketing analysts' estimates of $676 million.
Meanwhile, although the firm is clearly feeling flush, shareholders took a more cautious view as Adobe's shares fell 92 cents or 3.3 per cent to $27.25 in after-hours trading. µ
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...people have started to discover that the pirated versions of their Creative Suite work better than the real thing, install better than the real thing - and, best of all, cost nothing. Adobe software is a notorious example of where the pirated product is better than the real thing.
As someone who shelled out lots of money for both CS3 and the CS4 upgrade, I can tell Adobe's shareholders something for free: Don't hold your breath hoping I will upgrade to CS5. I actually felt robbed, which is not a good way to feel when you've splashed out on software.
With Adobe's habit of passing off weak, broken "upgrades" as new versions of their software, I'm not going to bat a tear if they go under. I shouldn't have to buy new versions just to fix the problems in the old ones.
I'm just sorry that the Adobe beast managed to swallow other, better companies like Macromedia.
"Narayen confirmed, saying Google's Android OS, Nokia's Symbian OS, Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS and even the new Palm Web OS would be among the first devices to support web browsing with the latest and greatest Flash player."
I hope they're getting a Black Berry version out as I don't see any mention of that. I know not everybody regards a Flash plug-in as essential, but as far as the RIM devices are concerned I felt this was one of their only major let downs.
Once I get the Flash plug-in installed I'll be able to use BBC's iPlayer which will be a big bonus for me.
One thing I don't understand, and haven't been able to Google answers as to why, is that fact that You Tube videos work fine. Don't they use Flash too?
Anyone know more about this issue please chime in? (except for that knob, Von Drashek - I don't have the time these days to even scroll past the 'drivel-nonsense' comments you seem to leave around this site like random animal faeces - please let me help pay for your one way ticket to Switzerland?
N.B. 'Switzerland has an unusual position on assisted suicide: it is legally condoned and can be performed by non-physicians'
Sorry everyone, I want to be the first in the thousand mile queue to help on this one...
Love from Dave xxx
Adobe really sucks lately:
Flash 10 is the worst ever. Locking up browsers after a few minutes of use.
Giving up on SVG was somewhat stupid. Adobe built the best SVG technology ever and let it rot. Now Mozilla, Opera, and Webkit have caught up. Only IE is lacking SVG support. Make a deal with Microsoft and sell them what they need for real money!
Adobe's venture into DRM when everybody else is avoiding it like the plague is highly unpopular. Invoking the DMCA on Sourceforge was the worst publicity stunt ever. Understand this: People buy stuff to _own_ stuff. DRM makes 'em feel ripped off the first time they try to move stuff from device A to device B. DRM hurts your sales!
Stop doing a rat race with Sun over RIA! (I won't even mention the third wanna-be.) Nobody is going to move from robust and mature JVM to cheap and buggy Flash. I would't buy a phone with Flash on it. I don't want my calls dropped because Flash is hogging my CPU.
PDF is your best asset. Don't spoil that one, too. Stop that DRM crap. It's giving PDF a bad name. Why is there no high-quality PDF viewer on the Kindle? There's a lost opportunity!
The reason may be that the youtube videos only use the FLV playback component (FLV is a container of flash that uses OPV6 o mp4 codecs) but not the entire flash player.