Adobe Acquires Macromedia for $3.4B.

Roszkiewicz, Ron

The article focuses on the acquisition of Macromedia Inc. by Adobe Systems Inc. Adobe Systems Inc. announced that it is acquiring Macromedia for $3.4 billion in stock. The announcement sent Adobe's stock price down around 10% and Macromedia's price up nearly 10% in early trading. Without going too far out on an interpretive limb, the emphasis on rich documents, PDF, e-forms and Flash conjures up a number of possibilities for a new class of interactive documents in the future. Both Adobe and Macromedia see themselves dominating the future of mobile content. The acquisition brings together two of the dominant players in print and Web content creation and technology development. To be sure, this announcement caught some off guard, since press reports for years have centered on the functions and features race between Adobe Illustrator and GoLive with Macromedia's FreeHand and Dreamweaver for market dominance. Both Adobe and Macromedia are professional tool suppliers with peripheral product support for consumer markets. They are both making inroads into broader professional markets, such as enterprise document management (Adobe) and non-PC content development and display (Macromedia), where partnerships dominate and interoperability can make or break a product or development environment.

MERGERS & acquisitions; ADOBE Systems Inc.; MACROMEDIA Inc. (California); CONSUMERS; STOCK prices; INTERNET content providers

Seybold Report: Analyzing Publishing Technologies, 2005, Vol 5, Issue 2, p16

1533-9211

Academic Journal