Flash who? Adobe gets serious about mobile, cloud & HTML5

▤ Summary

For nearly 30 years, Adobe Systems (s ADBE) has made the lion’s share of its revenue by selling multimedia and creativity software for desktop computers. But that focus on the desktop has grown increasingly out of touch in recent years, as the larger technology landscape has shifted toward heavier usage of mobile devices and software-as-a-service applications hosted in the cloud. In a series of announcements at its MAX 2011 conference Monday, Adobe revealed a new focus on cloud technology and a much stronger mobile strategy, showing that it is more serious than ever about addressing today’s dominant tech industry trends. Adobe’s new direction will almost certainly come with growing pains as it adapts to a radically different cloud-centric business model, and the fact that Adobe is a public company won’t make things easier. Stock market investors are a notoriously hard-to-please and impatient bunch, and getting used to the new rhythm of revenue generation (mobile apps bring in money in a very different way than desktop software does) will probably take some time.

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