Its been over two years since the Macromedia acquisition. What is your outlook on this?
When Adobe bought Macromedia, the company was being questioned about what its going to do with it. We had lots of ideas and plans but they were not specific. Now were specific about our strategy around the Macromedia acquisition. An instance is the launch of Adobe Creative Suite3 (CS3), which had a huge impact on the market. CS3 took some of the assets of Macromedia.

What are the big business drives for the company today?
In terms of what drives the $3.1 bn, I would say the big drivers are the Acrobat and the LiveCycle business, which is our enterprise solutions business.

What are your future initiatives?
Today, the challenge is to create compelling content across media. Our big focus area, therefore, is getting to interact with Web and mobile. The Web is emerging as a very powerful medium, and a great number of developers are moving to the Web. In terms of Web, were talking about rich Internet applications. Adobe Integrated Runtime or AIR takes the power of the desktop and binds it with the immediacy of the Web. AIR applications, take the best of the Internet and the desktop.

The other area is the mobile. We are making a big play around the mobile. Our designer community is increasingly building more and more content for mobile devices. On this front, there is Flash Lite, which is a version of Flash for mobile devices. Presently, Flash Lite is available on around 450 mn devices and we are targeting close to a billion by the end of 2009.

Then, there is the third strand, which is the video. A lot of content and media companies are showing interest in the video space. Their business model today says that I know how to make money around broadcasting. But they dont know how to put a broadcast quality video/content on the Web and make a business model out of it. Weve been working on the video front as well in the form of the Adobe Media Player. Were taking flash and making it as the backbone to video delivery on the Internet.

What kind of opportunity do you foresee in the digital media?
As per market research reports, it is estimated that between 2007 and 2010, Internet ad spends will grow by 69% and raise its market share from 8.1% to 11.5%. Also, by the end of 2010, the Internet is likely to overtake magazines to become the worlds third-largest advertising medium.

Shipra Malhotra
shipram@cybermedia.co.in

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