Adobe SWOT Analysis

Adobe has a great number of strengths. First major strength is the widespread name recognition that the company has. Largely because of the product Acrobat, and specifically the reader that is installed on most PCs throughout the United States and the world. This is a piece of software that reads PDF files, which Adobe has made free for the public. This was a very smart idea on the part of Adobe. As stated previously, this brings the Adobe name into almost every home and business. Another major strength for Adobe is that they were one of the first companies to specialize in graphic design software. It hasn’t been too many years since graphic design started to be done almost solely with the computer. Adobe quickly cornered this market and has continued to remain the leader. The third major strength working in Adobe’s favor is that the industry they chose to make software for is continuing to grow day-by-day and continues to give the company the opportunity to make more software products to fit the industries growing needs.

One major weakness in the way Adobe does business is a lack of marketing. In doing research, we found that Adobe has products for audio recording and editing, video recording and editing in addition to the popular photograph editing, illustrating, and publication layout. They also have products to enhance other software out on the market including a product called Ovation which is designed to work with Microsoft PowerPoint to improve presentations. This was only one of several different kinds of software that we found out that they offered. With both the design industry and the social media market growing as fast as they are, it was surprising that there’s not more information out there about these products that they have available. Another weakness that we have observed is that they don’t seem to be staying ahead of the market. Their products Photoshop and Illustrator were on the cutting edge of the graphic design industry and Adobe has made themselves indispensable to graphic designers with these products. More recently, however, they haven’t seemed to stay ahead of the new trends. While they do have products for the newer industry, the name Adobe is not nearly as well established within those industries.

The major opportunity out there for Adobe right now is that its software serves some of the fastest growing industries. With the growing trend in social networking media like MySpace, Facebook, and others, photo editing and video editing are growing hobbies among the amateur market. Graphic design is also a very fast growing industry. If Adobe can capitalize on the software that it offers for these tasks, they can really put themselves ahead of the competition, not only in its graphic design software, but in the other types of software as well.

The biggest threat out there for Adobe is change. As the markets continue to change, the software has to consistently change as well. With industries that are growing this fast, it can be tough for technology companies to stay ahead of the change. Microsoft is continuing to grow and expand the types of software that it offers. Microsoft already has a photo editing software, a drawing software, and a desktop publishing software. With the growing amateur market, these lower tech, lower priced software options stand to pull some of the market from Adobe unless they can find a new way to compete.