Apple, Adobe Still on the Same Page
Microsoft aside, there’s only one software company that the Mac simply cannot live without: Adobe Systems Inc.
As developer of most of the leading desktop design programs--PageMaker, Photoshop, PostScript, Illustrator, Acrobat and FrameMaker--Adobe has nearly become to desktop publishing what Microsoft is to business-productivity software. QuarkXpress is the only non-Adobe product that is absolutely central to desktop publishing--on the Mac or on Windows machines.
In short, Adobe equals publishing. And given Apple’s strategic focus on publishing, the strength of Adobe’s Mac sales is a telling measure of the strength of the Mac. Historically, Adobe has deep roots on the Mac platform and has been one of the top Mac software vendors. But how successful has it been during these trying times for Apple?
Here’s the bad news. Last year, for the first time, Adobe’s Windows application revenue overtook sales of its Mac applications--56% to 44%. While Windows revenue grew by 49% in 1997, Mac revenue shrunk by 19%.
“Adobe makes money by selling units of software. There are fewer and fewer Macs being sold to sell software into,” said longtime Mac market analyst Kim Brown of Dataquest. “Adobe’s whole purpose in life going forward is to move its installed base over to Windows.” Brown sees Windows NT, in particular, as poised to become the dominant publishing system.
Is this pessimistic view warranted? Apple faces daunting challenges to its lifelong advantage in publishing, but if you look more deeply into the Adobe numbers, things don’t seem quite so bleak.
The Mac’s market share dropped about 40% from about 5% in the fourth quarter of 1996 to about 3% in the same quarter of 1997, a dramatically more rapid decline than Adobe saw in its Mac software sales.
“Our research shows that only about 2% of our new Windows customers moved over from Macintosh. It appears that publishing professionals who grew up on the Macintosh are pretty loyal to the Mac,” said Bruce Chizen, Adobe’s senior vice president and general manager of its Graphics Professional Product Division. And in the most recent quarter, Chizen said, 41% of Adobe’s sales of new software packages--as opposed to old customers upgrading to newer versions--went to Mac customers. So it’s not just a replacement market.
Why is that? Several factors still favor the Mac in professional publishing:
* Apple has made publishing one of its key priorities and has followed through by creating media-creation demons. Publishers have responded, pumping up sales of the new G3 machines well above expectations.
* Unlike many other realms, publishing-software vendors still produce their Mac versions either simultaneously with or ahead of their Windows versions.
* The Mac’s ease of use, flexibility and commanding presence in publishing-service bureaus around the world prevents a mass migration to Windows among professional publishers.
So while it’s true that Adobe is aggressively courting the Windows-user publishing market, and Windows software is already its biggest market, the bottom hasn’t dropped out of Mac publishing yet.
What about the future? Will Adobe continue to make the Mac a key part of its business? “There’s been a fallacy created in the marketplace that because we have focused energies on Windows, that we’re not committed to the Mac. That’s absolutely not true--we are committed to the Mac,” Chizen said.
“We have to keep our Macintosh users happy,” he said, “not just because we want to get revenue from them, but because the Mac is the platform of choice for professional graphics users” and drives the patterns of use for Windows users. In other words, Adobe still views Mac users as the trendsetters who move publishing forward.
Given Apple’s strategy of riding publishing to a viable long-term future, Mac users should find it reassuring to hear that vote of confidence from the No. 1 publishing-software house.
Talk of commitment is cheap, though. In light of Apple’s plummeting market share, I found myself curious about the loyalties of Adobe’s own designers. The company’s Web site is produced on both Macs and PCs, I learned. But Adobe’s magazine and its user-education materials are produced entirely on Macs. That’s walking the talk.
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Charles Piller can be reached via e-mail at cpiller@mindspring.com
