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Adobe

Adobe

Tagline

Changing the world through digital experiences.

Net Worth

$2,950,000,000

Started in (City)

San Jose, California

Started in (Country)

USA

Incorporation Date

01st December, 1982

Bankruptcy Date

-

Founders

  • Warnock and Charles Geschke

About

Adobe is famous worldwide because it has a wide range of software products that are useful in editing and designing digital content like audio, videos, animations, graphics, etc. Most of its software products are dominant in the digital marketing industry. The main Adobe product category includes Graphic design software, Web design programs, Video editing, animation, and visual effects, Audio editing software, eLearning software, Digital Marketing Management Software, Server software, Formats, Web-hosted services, 3D and AR, Adobe Renderer, Adobe Stock, Adobe Experience Platform.

Beginning

The company was founded by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982, they started in John Warnock’s garage. Gradually the company began to become famous with their incredible ideas and software product within the months of their launch and this caught the attention of Steve Jobs. He had already identified the potential of the idea and was excited to collaborate with Adobe and he paid five times of their company’s valuation at that time and signed a five-year license fee for PostScript and paid in advance. The purchase of 19% of shares by Steve Jobs made Adobe Inc. the first company to be profitable in its very first year in the history of Silicon Valley.

Road to Success

The two founders John and Charles always considered various business options and focused more on developing specialized printing software and created the Adobe PostScript page description language. It had the algorithms describing the letterforms of many languages with the international standard for computer printing. By the year 1987 PostScript had become the industry standard printer language that included 400 plus third-party software programs and licensing agreements with 19 printer companies. After PostScript, another product digital font was introduced and was released in a format called Type 1. In the mid-80s Adobe developed software for Apple Macintosh called Illustrator, a vector-based drawing platform. Illustrator was widely used for the development of in-house font-development software. In 1989 Adobe launched a graphics editing program Photoshop for the Macintosh. Photoshop 1.0 was marketed by Adobe and very soon the software dominated the market. In 1993, Adobe introduced Portable Document Format(PDF) which is now an International Standard and its Adobe Acrobat and Reader software. And many more software products listed below: ● In December 1991 - Adobe Premiere ● In April 2008 - Adobe Media Player ● In June 2008 - Acrobat.com was launched Along with the lunches, Adobe has also acquired many software companies. Most of Adobe’s software products are offered in the paid versions and through this Adobe generates revenue. Some online software can be used free with limited fonts and features. Adobe’s revenue was $1 billion in 1999 and grew to $4 billion in 2012, the financial year is considered from December to next November. In 2019 the revenue was $11.17 billion and net income of $2.95 billion with 22,635 employees working worldwide.

Challenges

The whole digital marketing industry relies on Adobe’s software products. Having no much competition Adobe has been constantly condemned for its pricing practices, with non-US countries paying double retail prices. Due to the unfair Adobe reader and flash program were noted as ’The 10 most hated program of all times. Adobe has also been blamed to force unwanted software together with third-party browser toolbars and free virus scanners, commonly as a part of Flash update process. The data breach has been a huge issue in adobe; it revealed in 2013, ‘sensitive and personal data was stolen in a security breach. Millions of active users’ credit card information had been affected. Later many credit cards were secured to the creative cloud software by subscription service. These subscriptions were given free for US customers and non-US customers were charged for the same and hence hated and criticized all over again by customers. Due to its monopoly in the market, Adobe tried controlling the market and unrated its competitors, which resulted in Lawsuits for violation of Federal and State antitrust law. Later, the Lawsuits were eventually settled.

Failures

Hackers gained unauthorized access to computers and had exploited vulnerabilities in adobe programs, such as Adobe Readers. Among other things, suffering from performance, memory usage, and security problems were also been condemned in Adobe’s Flash player. According to the reports by Kaspersky Lab, Adobe was also criticized for producing products having top 10 security vulnerabilities. It was noted that Adobe by including spyware in the Creative Suite 3 Software, was spying on its customer and sending the data to a firm called Omniture. Later when questioned by the users, Adobe admitted and clarified that they “could and should do a better job taking security concerns into account”.

Achievements

  • Adobe was named on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For.
  • Adobe is recognized as a leader in providing workplace LGBT equality.
  • Adobe was included in this new index (SPXESRP) which tracks S&P 500 companies that have high environmental and social sustainability scores.

Subsidies

  • Marketo
  • Fotolia
  • Workfront

CEOs

  • Shantanu Narayen