Despite continuing wild cards revolving around Apple’s lack of support for Flash and open Web standards, Adobe’s business appears to be chugging along nicely. In fact, the outlook for Creative Suite 5 upgrades and other development tools remain strong even with Apple’s ban on Flash, according to a survey by Jefferies.
Jefferies analyst Ross MacMillan conducts a survey of 50 creative pros each quarter. The immediate takeaway from MacMillan’s survey is that upgrades continue for Creative Suite 5, which drives Adobe’s revenue. Creative professionals also note that Adobe tools will be used alongside open standards such as HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3. In fact, 94 percent say open standards are positive to neutral for Adobe.
Adobe’s standing with developers is also helped by the fact that it is finding a way to work around Apple’s restrictions. For instance, Wallaby, an application from Adobe Labs that has generated some buzz, can transform Flash code into HTML5 as a way to reach Apple’s iOS.
The bottom line appears to be that Adobe remains the developer choice. Macmillan notes 88 percent of creative pros will use Adobe alongside open standards and only 13 percent expect to use Apple tools exclusively for iOS development. Survey respondents also noted they can use Adobe AIR to build Apple iOS apps. Apple’s move to lay off plans to only support native applications has appeared to help Adobe.
A few key charts to note:
Other odds and ends:
- 88 percent of respondents haven’t adopted Adobe’s Omniture web analytics tools.
- 62 percent said that Apple’s refusal to support Flash was neutral for Adobe and 38 percent said it was negative.
- There has been a spike in respondents (more than 60 percent) planning to upgrade to Creative Suite 5 in the next 3 to 6 months.
