ADOBE SYSTEMS

'Adobe Systems Incorporated' (pronounced a-DOE-bee ) () () is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA.
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.
As of January 2007, Adobe Systems has 6,068 employees,^[1] about 40% of whom work in San Jose. Adobe also has major development operations in Seattle, Washington; San Francisco, California; Ottawa, Canada, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Newton, Massachusetts; San Luis Obispo, California and in Hamburg, Germany, Noida, India,and Bangalore, India.
Since 2001, Fortune magazine 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, and 31st in 2007.^[2]

Contents

History

Corporate Leadership

Products

Financial information

Revenue

See also

Notes

References

History

Adobe Systems headquarters in San Jose

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, though 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.^[3]
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 classic 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 rebrand to Adobe Premiere Pro in 2003. Also in the same year (1991), Adobe released Adobe InCopy as a direct competitor to QuarkCopyDesk. In 1994, Adobe acquired Aldus and added Adobe PageMaker and Adobe After Effects to its production line; later in the year also control the TIFF file format. In 1995, Adobe added Adobe FrameMaker, the long-document DTP application, to its production line after Adobe acquire Frame Technology Corp.
In 1999, Adobe acquired GoLive Systems, Inc. and released Adobe GoLive.
Also, in 1999, Adobe shipped Adobe InDesign as a direct competitor to QuarkXPress.
In May 2003, Adobe acquired Syntrillium Software, which added Adobe Audition to its product line.
On December 12, 2005, Adobe Systems acquired its main rival Macromedia in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion which adds: Adobe ColdFusion, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Director, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Flash, Macromedia FlashPaper, Adobe Flex, Macromedia FreeHand, Macromedia HomeSite, Macromedia JRun, and Macromedia Authorware to Adobe's production line.^[4][4][6]
In December 2006, the firm's headquarters buildings in San Jose received three Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certifications^[7][8].
In January 2007, Adobe released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to assist photographers in managing digital images and doing post production work.
In July 2007, Adobe released Adobe Soundbooth for professionals not specialize in audio.
On August 3, 2007, Adobe announced its 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. No comparable eLearning development tool in terms of capabilities is being offered at this time by Adobe.

Corporate Leadership

'Executive Board'
Charles M. Geschke	Co-Chairman of the Board
John E. Warnock	Co-Chairman of the Board
Bruce Chizen	CEO, Director (2005 Compensation: $1.99 M USD)
Shantanu Narayen	President & Chief Operating Officer (2005 Compensation: $1.08 M USD)

Products

Main articles: List of Adobe software

Financial information

Adobe Systems entered NASDAQ in 1986. Adobe's 2006 revenues were $2.575 billion USD.^[9] As of February 2007, Adobe's market capitalization is roughly $23 billion USD, and, as of August, 2007, its shares are trading on the NASDAQ for around $40 USD, with a P/E ratio of about 49 and EPS of about $0.82.

Revenue

Fiscal year	Revenue
2006	$2.575 billion [10]
2005	$1.966 billion [10]
2004	$1.667 billion [12]
2003	$1.295 billion [13]
2002	$1.165 billion [13]
2001	$1.230 billion [15]
2000	$1.266 billion [16]
1999	$1.015 billion [16]
1998	$0.895 billion [18]
1997	$0.912 billion [18]
1996	$0.787 billion [18]
1995	$0.762 billion [18]
1994	$0.676 billion [18]

See also

★ Adobe Engagement Platform

★ Adobe Solutions Network

★ OpenType

★ PDF

★ PostScript

★ Adobe ColdFusion

Notes

1. Adobe Fast Facts
2. 100 Best Companies to Work For 2007
3. How Adobe's Photoshop Was Born
4.
5.
6. Adobe buys Macromedia in .4B deal Jefferson Graham
7. Adobe Headquarters Awarded Highest Honors from U.S. Green Building Council
8. The Greenest Office in America
9. Adobe Systems Incorporated Company Profile
10. http://www.adobe.com/de/aboutadobe/pressroom/pr/dec2006/Q406Earnings.pdf
11. http://www.adobe.com/de/aboutadobe/pressroom/pr/dec2006/Q406Earnings.pdf
12. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/pdfs/Q404Earnings.pdf
13. http://outputlinks.com/html/news/news-02387.shtml
14. http://outputlinks.com/html/news/news-02387.shtml
15. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/200212/2002Q4Earnings.pdf
16. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/200012/20001214.adbeq4.pdf
17. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/200012/20001214.adbeq4.pdf
18. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/pdfs/Q49810K.pdf
19. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/pdfs/Q49810K.pdf
20. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/pdfs/Q49810K.pdf
21. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/pdfs/Q49810K.pdf
22. http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/pdfs/Q49810K.pdf

References

★ Adobe Logo History

★ Adobe User Feedback Webiste

★ Adobe timeline

★ Patents owned by Adobe Systems

★ San Jose Semaphore on Adobe's building

★ Adobe Systems Incorporated Company Profile