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."

Comments

When will it stop?

[Anonymous Coward]

cant we all just get a bong?

Proprietary formats should die, anyway

[sam_handelman]

Doing this would be, in the long run, a death sentence for Adobe. The only reason for existence that Adobe really has, right now, is that if you put documents in their format(s), everyone will be able to read them, because Adobe has gone to a lot of trouble to make acrobat reader ubiquitous; which in turn provides Adobe's other products with unthinkable amounts of free advertising. I don't want to reignite the religious argument about the merits of different formats - but suffice to say that .pdf isn't enough better, intrinsically, than the various free formats to be worth paying money for.

If they cut off support for 50% of the human race, they will cease to be the defacto standard really quick.

This is a good thing. Having a proprietary standard for scanned document transmission over the web sucks 'til donkey jiz runs down its chin. How many universities do you know who spring to put Acrobat Writer on all of their workstations? If I hand out documents as .ps files, half of my students can't even read them. The sooner adobe implodes (preferably, as in this case, from its own stupidity), the better.

Yes, I am aware that they also make Photoshop, which is not proprietary format dependent (and even worth buying) so they will not actually implode and vanish with a little "pop" should .pdf pass away; however, they will lose the biggest (only?) edge they have.

Re:China is not a very impressive market

[dbremner]

I have no idea why we have a normalized trade relationship with this country and yet Cuba is still under an embargo
China is a huge market for cheap products and (close to) slave labor. It serves American corporate interests to ignore human rights issues in China. As for Cuba, Cuban-American voters - same reason we support Israel.