A dobe Systems, makers of the seemingly ubiquitous Acrobat Reader and Photoshop, has announced that profits for the more recent quarter more than doubled over previous quarters. Adobe attributes the profits to Adobe Creative Suite, a suite that, on the Mac side, is available only on Mac OS X. The AP is reporting that profits for the quarter clocked in at US$123 million, or 50 cents per share. In the year-ago quarter, the company posted a profit of some US$54.2 million, or 23 cents a share. Revenue was also higher at US$423.3 million, up 43% from the year-ago quarter of US$296.9 million.
In an interview given to the AP, Adobe CEO Bruce R. Chizen -- a repeat performer in many a Steve Jobs keynote -- suggests that the companyis sales still have room to grow from Creative Suite as it requires Mac OS X (on the Windows side, Creative Suite requires Windows XP). This relates to adoption rates of Mac OS X in the graphics and publishing markets, where many companies are still using Mac OS 9.x and below. From the AP:
President and chief executive Bruce R. Chizen said the strong quarter was driven by the companyis new Adobe Creative Suite, which bundles several of its popular software titles together, and its intelligent-documents business.
In an interview, Chizen said Adobeis Creative Suite has not yet reached the top of its sales cycle.
"We donit believe we are at the peak" for a variety of reasons, he said. Customers are taking extra time to decide which version of the product to buy and to debate the merits of the suite compared with individual Adobe products, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, he said. The Creative Suite includes upgrades of five types of Adobeis publishing software.
Other customers are still evaluating the move to Apple Computer Inc.is OS X operating system, which the suite requires, Chizen said.
Thereis more information in the full article, which comes to us via the Washington Post (free registration required)