The Flash Player is unique in that it creates markets. When Adobe or Macromedia added webcam support all of a sudden video chat applications are possible, QR code readers are made possible, augmented reality is made possible, face recognition is made possible, motion tracking is made possible, etc. (add "on a mass scale" to all of these things.)
When they added microphone support speech to text is made possible, podcast applications are made possible, voip are made possible, live digital audio software is made possible. When they added video decoding support movies and television content were made possible. At each of these points in time Adobe had a potential opportunity. Think of all the businesses that exist because of these features. Theoretically speaking they could have made a Skype (and still can), they could and can make a Google Voice, they could and can make an iTunes. They could and did make a GoToMeeting but that's another story. But I *wouldn't* recommend them doing these things (not if it means laying off other teams). They are great at tooling and I think they should focus on that but there is a way for them to benefit from all of these innovations. If I was trying to make Flash profitable I would have someone on the Flash Player and Flex SDK feature releases and forums and watch for and promote new projects using their new features. Then I'd invest in those developers and companies and do everything I can to make them successful. As the developers and companies are successful, Adobe would be successful too. They'd also have a continual insight into the features and needs for their design and developer tools. Alex, I'll available immediately for this position ;) On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com> wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Roland Zwaga [mailto:rol...@stackandheap.com] > > Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:33 AM > > To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org > > Subject: Re: [OT] Atlassian > > > > Hi Alex, > > > > So I'm trying to understand > > where > > this disconnect between Adobe and its enterprise > > customers stemmed from, when Atlassian is a great example of a company > > who > > IS able to make money in that area. > > Like I said before, I'm not attacking/bashing Adobe, I'm just trying to > > understand where things went wrong. > > > I'm not involved in the business part of Adobe, but again, Atlassian can > get money from each employee at an enterprise customer. The Flash Platform > only gets money from each developer at an enterprise customer. > > Frameworks are expensive and many very successful ones like JQuery are > 'free' and developed in the open. Adobe is trying to best serve its Flex > customers by following the same model. > > The 'disconnect' was in the execution of the announcement of these > changes, as has been discussed. > > Alex Harui > Flex SDK Developer > Adobe Systems Inc. > Blog: http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui > > >
