Saturday, June 25, 2005

PBS | I, Cringely . June 23, 2005 - No Flash in the Pan

PBS | I, Cringely . June 23, 2005 - No Flash in the Pan: "In all the world of computing and the Internet, what technology has the greatest market share and the most loyal upgraders? Is it Microsoft's Windows operating system? Is it Sun's Java programming language? No, it is Macromedia's Flash web graphics software. Flash is installed on more computers than any other program. Not only does Flash have a market share that dwarfs Windows and Java, we upgrade relentlessly to new versions. Flash is huge, and Flash is a lot of the reason why Adobe Systems recently agreed to buy Macromedia, the home of Flash.
Of course, Adobe gets a lot more than Flash from its $3.4 billion (all stock, no cash) purchase. It gets Codeweaver [sic -- Dreamweaver] and ColdFusion, and a bunch of web development tools that go a long way toward carrying Adobe from being a software company for print to a software company for the web. Heck, Adobe gets the FreeHand vector drawing package for the second time, having sold it to Macromedia years before after buying Aldus. FreeHand, which Adobe had to sell the last time because it competed too directly with Illustrator, might well go on the block again, though it is hard to imagine what company would be in a position to buy it. Microsoft?"

Interesting analysis

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