Реферат: Adobe Systems Inc Essay Research Paper Adobe
be the company leading the charge into the world of desktop publishing.
Adobe owned rights to 200 typefaces, had the de facto standard PDL, an
agreement with Steven Jobs at NeXt to develop a version of PostScript
for workstations, and had received a royalty on more than 26,000 printers
that had been sold with PostScript.
In 1988, Adobe added thirteen fonts to its library and introduced the
Font Folio, a $9,600 hard disk containing its entire font library. Users
could download the entire library of fonts one time and only have to add
the quarterly updates of additional fonts. Compugraphic and Varityper,
two commercial typesetter manufacturers, brought out high-resolution laser
printers (1900 dots per inch to 2400 dpi) with PostScript. Adobe continued
to work with desktop printer manufacturers and added Matsushita
and Ricoh, two Japanese manufacturers,
to its list of supporters. Ricoh manufactured printer engines for several
original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and the alliance with Ricoh was
the first time Adobe had dealt with a company other than a printer manufacturer.
Competition
Clones of PostScript were beginning to eat into Adobe’s market by offering
PDLs that many printer manufacturers and customers felt were good enough.
Phoenix Technologies, Ltd. and Conographic Corporation had introduced
their own PDLs in 1987, and by 1988 they were gaining acceptance. Some
laser printer manufacturers began to feel pinched by the additional price
they had to charge for a PostScript printer to pay the Adobe royalty.
Customers were buying impact printers, which couldn’t compare in quality
with the laser printers, but cost one-tenth the price of a laser printer.
Adobe’s 1988 revenues were $83 million, 75 percent of which came from
PostScript, and the clones were threatening to take part of the low-end
printer market. While Adobe’s PostScript was a product that had widespread
support by its users, Adobe failed to see that it was stifling growth