Adobe and Macromedia Set To Become One

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html' target='_blank'>http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/inv...macromedia.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia (Nasdaq: MACR) in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by both boards of directors, Macromedia stockholders will receive, at a fixed exchange ratio, 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock for every share of Macromedia common stock in a tax-free exchange. Based on Adobe’s and Macromedia’s closing prices on Friday April 15, 2005, this represents a price of $41.86 per share of Macromedia common stock."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20050418-AdobeMacromedia.gif" /><br /><br />Okay, this is definitely big news! Macromedia are well-known for delivering digital media content for the web, and Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia may bring forth some exciting results. For example, tighter integration of the Acrobat and Flash technologies may appear sometime in the near future. But with all merges, there are always people on the sidelines who predict nothing but multi-billion dollar flops. Your thoughts on this one?<br /><br /><b>Update:</b> I originally had this posted in the "Off-Topic" section, but now I believe it may be relevant to the future of mobile devices, so I've since bumped it to the "News" section. Some news companies such as <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8210788">Reuters</a> are now reporting the following: <i>"Adobe, best known for its Acrobat document-sharing software, said the deal would help it meet rising customer demand for audio and video options that are compatible with hand-held devices. Macromedia also gives Adobe access to the dominant animated graphics software on the Internet and which is also aggressively expanding into mobile phones."</i> Will this merge spell a new wave of digital media content for PDAs? Time will tell.

[OneAngryDwarf]

New wave? Doubt it. Less redundancy? Yes. It'll be nice to see each company get rid of their half-hearted attempts to enter eachothers market by simply getting the best from each.
Well now, if only Apple would buy Microsoft... that would make my day. Something tells me that won't be happening in my lifetime or any other reincarnated lifetime in the future.

[stevelam]

Which system are they going to kill though, flashpaper and pdf are basically the same thing.

[beq]

Whoa 8O 8O That is big news! I'm not sure what else to say yet...

With mergers/acquisitions increasing in the software industry, almost seems like we're going to end up with a de facto monopoly in every market (Symantec, Adobe, etc).

[stevelam]

they will probably combine their products leaving out the best bits of both :D

[Eriq Cook]

WOW. This is huge. More than the HP/Compaq merger, to me. Next thing we'll see is Microsoft aquire Adobe in a 2-3 years. Anybody agree?

[KTamas]

WOW. This is huge. More than the HP/Compaq merger, to me. Next thing we'll see is Microsoft aquire Adobe in a 2-3 years. Anybody agree?
Yes, then 2-3 years later Apple buys Microsoft. Then, 2-3 years later the Open Source community buys Apple and it goes opensource. Then, someone steals the Open Source code and Microsoft 2.0 will be born... :lol:

[beq]

^ You almost sound like John C. Dvorak who's been continually predicting Microsoft's imminent release of MS-Linux :)

[ricksfiona]

Less competition? Personally, I think this is a bad move for Adobe... Taking two great companies and merging them into usually makes one mediocre company. There's going to be in-fighting and power struggles like you won't believe.

Though, this will open the door to up-and-commers. Macromedia/Adobe isn't Microsoft big, so smaller companies do have a shot to take some market share.

[Bujin]

I'm disappointed. I've been using Dreamweaver since before it was even called Dreamweaver. I much prefer Fireworks to either Photoshop or Illustrator as well, so I'm concerned that the poster who joked above that they'll probably merge their products and leave out the best parts of both probably isn't too far off.

Oh, well... I guess I'll be using the version of MX studio that I have now for quite a while.

== Sean

[bbarker]

they will probably combine their products leaving out the best bits of both :D
Yes, I think they will keep the iPaq and do away with the Jornada.

[stevelam]

I'm disappointed. I've been using Dreamweaver since before it was even called Dreamweaver. I much prefer Fireworks to either Photoshop or Illustrator as well, so I'm concerned that the poster who joked above that they'll probably merge their products and leave out the best parts of both probably isn't too far off.

Oh, well... I guess I'll be using the version of MX studio that I have now for quite a while.

== Sean

Joking .... I was deadly serious

[Bujin]

I'm disappointed. I've been using Dreamweaver since before it was even called Dreamweaver. I much prefer Fireworks to either Photoshop or Illustrator as well, so I'm concerned that the poster who joked above that they'll probably merge their products and leave out the best parts of both probably isn't too far off.

Oh, well... I guess I'll be using the version of MX studio that I have now for quite a while.

== Sean

Joking .... I was deadly serious

And I don't blame you. Scares the heck out of me too.

One other post that I'd like to quibble with is the person that said that Acrobat and Flashpaper were essentially the same. They may have had the same goal, but I think that Flashpaper was, by far, a superior product. Way more streamlined, in my mind, to have a program like Flashpaper that uses what is more than likely an existing plugin already running in the browser to display documents rather than having to wait for Acrobat to load. Acrobat is painfully slow for me... I was always disappointed that Flashpaper didn't catch on more quickly.

== Sean

[stevelam]

I'm disappointed. I've been using Dreamweaver since before it was even called Dreamweaver. I much prefer Fireworks to either Photoshop or Illustrator as well, so I'm concerned that the poster who joked above that they'll probably merge their products and leave out the best parts of both probably isn't too far off.

Oh, well... I guess I'll be using the version of MX studio that I have now for quite a while.

== Sean

Joking .... I was deadly serious

And I don't blame you. Scares the heck out of me too.

One other post that I'd like to quibble with is the person that said that Acrobat and Flashpaper were essentially the same. They may have had the same goal, but I think that Flashpaper was, by far, a superior product. Way more streamlined, in my mind, to have a program like Flashpaper that uses what is more than likely an existing plugin already running in the browser to display documents rather than having to wait for Acrobat to load. Acrobat is painfully slow for me... I was always disappointed that Flashpaper didn't catch on more quickly.

== Sean

Yep that was me as well, and yes i do certainly agree with your point.

[davea0511]

nothing in the world will make PDF go away.

'tis sad but true. Maybe they'll make Flashpaper more PDF freindly and get rid of Acrobat. I can always dream.

I imagine Dreamweaver will be their flagship HTML editor. Nobody is even close to catching up to Flash MX for animated SVG so they won't kill that.

For unanimated SVG and bitmap creation and editing: Freehand and Fireworks might phase out as Photoshop develops more SVG abilities.Photoshop is such a jack of all trades - and that's been one of Macromedia's marketing problems - they have too many products that only do one thing - even though it may do it extremely well, it's confusing for prospective customers who'd prefer to use 1 program rather than 2 or 3 different programs to accomplish the same thing.

I'vd always thought Macromedia's tools, while phenomenal, have always been poorly marketed - there's too many of them, with overlapping capabilities, and too many packages (studios), and it seems they're always changing product names and phasing out and bringing in something else. I'm afraid this move will only make that situation worse, and you'll see some near term struggles and confusion as a result. Long term, however, this should be a good move IMHO as it will ultimately help them consolidate their product lines into fewer yet more integrated packages.