I'm impressed with Adobe

[Fred Ridder]

As I see it (and I admit that I see it somewhat differently
than many other people), it doesn't really make much difference.
Both FrameMaker and RoboHelp are mature products for fairly
small niche markets. Adobe will continue to sell some small 
number of brand-new licenses for these niche products, but new
licenses will never be a major revenue stream in the context 
of Adobe's overall business. And spending a lot of money on 
advertising and promotion to gain new users in these niche
markets really doesn't make much business sense. How may 
technical writers are unaware of FrameMaker and how many
help developers are unaware of RoboHelp? And how much 
money would Adobe have to spend to reach the small number
of potential purchases who are unaware? 
 
The only way Adobe can generate any significant revenue from 
these products is to continue to develop them so that users will
continue to purchase upgrades. Admittedly, this only makes business 
sense as long as the revenue from selling upgrades exceeds the 
cost of developing and testing the new versions of the applications.
But the fact that Adobe chose to make the investment of letting 
a new crew of developers become familiar enough with the code
base of these products to release new versions of each in 2007 has
to be seen as a good sign because that kind of investment often 
takes two release cycles to pay off. If they really inteded to end-
of-life these products (as they have for PageMaker, for example), 
they wouldn't have made that kind of investment.
 
-Fred Ridder
> Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:08:27 -0500> From: kmcdaniel at pavtech.com> To: framers at lists.frameusers.com> Subject: RE: I'm impressed with Adobe> > So, I'm preparing presentation to my CTO (my direct mgr) on whether or> not to upgrade from 7.0p579 to v8.0 or to go with a different HATT...> (BTW, I am also prepping a pres on structured authoring for many> reasons, but partly because of cheaper tools.) and wonder how I fit this> information into the pres. As an author, I certainly understand that it> appears Robo & Frame get fewer resources, makes my job potentially more> challenging, but in my one-man shop, and being new OTJ les than 2> months, I'd like to make sure I'm on solid ground with whatever> recommendation I take to my boss.> > -----Original Message-----> From: framers-bounces+kmcdaniel=pavtech.com at lists.frameusers.com> [mailto:framers-bounces+kmcdaniel=pavtech.com at lists.frameusers.com] On> Behalf Of Fred Ridder> Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 1:33 PM> To: Fred Wersan; framers at lists.frameusers.com> Subject: RE: I'm impressed with Adobe> > > And meanwhile, on the HATT list, there's a list member who has > posted nearly two dozen messages complaining beiiterly about> how RoboHelp was not included in the list of Adobe products> in their most recent SEC 10-K filing, nor is it included in the > categorized list of Adobe products in the documents on the > Adobe investor relations website. > > It's pretty clear that the marginal products in Adobe's product > line don't get consistent attention from the corporate level of > Adobe. But if you look at some of the data that is available in> the investor relations part of the Adobe website, the reason > seems pretty clear. According to these figures, the category> of Adobe products called "Other", which includes among a > half-dozen truly minor products such applications as FrameMaker,> PageMaker, Captivate, Director, Freehand, and presumably > RoboHelp, accounts for less than 10% of Adobe's revenue. The > "Creative Solutions" category is where all the action is, with> some 56% of revenue and glamorous products like Photoshop, > InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator. And the real cash > cow is the "Knowledge Worker Solutions" segment--basically > Adobe Acrobat--which generates more than 25% of Adobe's> revenue by itself. > > > > Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:37:25 -0400> From: fwersan at mak.com> To:> framers at lists.frameusers.com> Subject: Re: I'm impressed with Adobe> >> If you have had any doubts about where FrameMaker fits in the Adobe >> product line, just look at the add in the latest issue of Technical >> Communication for Robohelp (It's a few pages in from the beginning, says> > DivX, Inc. at the top)> > "... Adobe RoboHelp software--the core of> the Adobe technical > communicator product line....."> > Fred> -- > Fred> Wersan> Senior Technical Writer> MAK Technologies> 68 Moulton St.>> Cambridge, MA 02138> 617-876-8085>
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