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Adobe Considers Withdrawing from Asian Markets
Max Groff writes "This brief ZDNet article (printer-friendly version) describes how Adobe is considering leaving its Asian markets due to the apparently high levels of piracy across the Pacific. This change would not only cut off the marketing of Adobe products to Asian markets, but also halt the development of much of the company's Asian-language software."
"Asia can be a BIG market"
Asia *is* a big market, but piracy apparently makes it much smaller. They're leaving because the real market (the one that buys their products, from them) is too small. Any other company coming in will have exactly the same market Adobe has, and they will face the same problem.
It'll certainly prevent them from pirating the localized Chinese (etc) versions. If it costs Adobe more to translate, test, distribute, etc. their localized products than they make by doing it, then they'll have to leave that business. Not good for people that don't speak English. (Or another Western language.)
Actually, it is illegal to own an unlicensed copy of that CD in the U.S. And, I believe that Malaysia and other Asian contries technically have laws against piracy, they're just not enforced. If so, then it is illegal to buy such a copy in Malaysia too.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
A more complete version of this article was released four days ago by C|Net. The decision only seems to effect the Chinese language versions.
my blog
Well, things have been changing, most companies
in HK are forced to buy numerous copies of
software from BSA member due to the new
IP law. The situation here is better than most US
company that buy one copy of Photoshop and install in every machine, right?
China does not have a population of 3 billion yet. The 2000 census number was 1.29533 billion.
A proprietary standard is better than no standard.
.ps files are too problematic for general exchange. In other words, the .pdf file type is that much better than anything else out there.
PDF is a very widely used standard. In fact, its about the only standard for exchanging high quality print documents. And yes,
While PDF may be a proprietary file format, you do not need Adobe software to create or view PDF files. Mac OS X creates and views PDFs with the default - and Adobe free - default install. It just so happens that Adobe currently produces the best software for creating and viewing PDFs.
I'd tell you to take your open source bigotry elsewhere, but this is slashdot...
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.