The Aldus Adobe Merger
_____________________________
September 1994
wohl.com
Aldus and Adobe have finally merged, after a series of negotiations which came perilously close to collapsing, and required Aldus to release the Freehand graphics product which it markets under license from Altsys Corporation, after Altsys claimed that it would be unfairly hampered by Adobe's competing product Illustrator.
This merger is all about electronic publishing and creates a company that is not only one of the largest software vendors (their combined revenues for last year would have been about $520 Million, putting them in the big five with Microsoft, Lotus, and Novell), but surely the only large vendor of electronic publishing software.
Aldus has long specialized in electronic publishing software, with both its very successful desktop publishing product PageMaker, and a number of specialty products for graphics artists. Adobe brings PostScript, Illustrator, and Acrobat to the table.
In some sense, this merger is all about Acrobat. Adobe hopes to establish it as a broad standard for the exchange of documents. So far, that hasn't happened. But if it is sold in conjunction with PageMaker, a standard for electronic publishing, as documents are distributed electronically (rather than on paper), Acrobat could become much better known. In its hopes to be a standard, Acrobat has to compete with a number of other products including Interleaf's WorldView and KeyData's KeyView. We'll offer you a separate article on these products soon.
The merger will give Aldus a safe harbor (founder and chairman Paul Brainerd wanted to resign) and will help Adobe find a source for revenue to make up for diminishing growth as HP's PLC program competes with Adobe's PostScript for market share. Aldus has focused on the marketing of software, so they may be a good match for Adobe (which is largely a technology empire), helping them, for instance, with sales in Europe, where Aldus is much stronger. |
