Adobe To Acquire Macromedia
Wow… Adobe just announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia.
The two graphic design software houses. Arch-enemies. Together. It’s all mind-boggling as to what can come out of this.
- Adobe + Flash. This is gonna be big. They’re gonna push Flash as the lingua franca of the interactive web (while we wait on things like XForms, XAML, XUL and Web Forms 2.0) using the combined clout of Adobe and Macromedia’s apps. Adobe had made some progression into SVG, so hopefully everything isn’t too Flash-centric. And the growth in the mobile area (Just think of the licensing for Flash Lite in the future) is also gonna be good. This reason is probably worth it alone regardless of all the potential problems and overlap.
- A powerful set of integrated tools. For print, web and video. Photoshop + Dreamweaver. Director + Premier. Drools.
- Some good “synergies”. Adobe has been entrenched in the print area with InDesign and PDF. Macromedia is very web oriented, with many mobile and server components.
- Also lots of fallouts. There’s plenty of overlapping software. Dreamweaver vs GoLive. Illustrator vs Freehand. Whether they remain separate, get merged, or cannibalize each other’s parts and technologies remains to be seen.
- No real competitors. The only “real” competitors are Corel (with CorelDraw and its recent acquisition of Jasc) and opensource software, such as The GIMP. Maybe ACDSystems as a minor player since obtaining Canvas. With Adobe and Macromedia offering integrated suites, why try anything else. Bye bye Quark.
- Adobe Flash CS? Adobe Macromedia Flash? Adobe Macromedia Flash CS MX 2006! This is gonna be interesting =)