The Hindu : Adobe unveils 'divide and rule' policy for Acrobat

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 11, 2003

Business

Business

Adobe unveils 'divide and rule' policy for Acrobat

By Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE APRIL 10. Adobe's `Acrobat' — for 15 years the de facto standard for document interchange via Internet — is being re-launched next month in a new avatar, Version 6, that effectively divides the software tool into three separate products for different market sectors. All of them continue to harness Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and enable users to send or receive documents with the exact typefaces, text, pictures and layouts with which they were prepared.

But in a canny move, seemingly geared to head off any `Open' competition, the new editions also embrace the popular lingua franca of the Web — XML or eXtended Markup Language. The Silicon Valley, U.S.-based company announced this week that the new Acrobat family would consist of a high end "Acrobat 6.0 Professional'' beefed up for computer aided design (CAD) and engineering work; an "Acrobat 6.0 Standard'' optimised for the new work group culture, where multiple users collaborate on a single document and a `janatha' version called "Acrobat Elements.''

Announced U.S pricing for the range shows that the Standard version is slightly costlier at $249, than the old "one size fits all' Version 5. The top people's "Professional'' tool costs almost twice as much at $449 and the entry level "Elements'' which became available this week has been priced at $28 "per seat' in 1000 plus quantities. For most lay users the good news is that the product that they are most likely to need, the Acrobat Reader will continue to be freely downloadable, albeit under its new name of "Adobe Reader 6.0.'' In other words, you pay only to create documents in PDF format; not to read them. The `divide and rule' policy may be a shrewd piece of pre-emptive marketing to head off quite a few free or nearly free, products (like RoboPDF and PDF995), which claim to create files in the PDF format.

They thrived because the standard Adobe Acrobat that used to cost around $200 or Rs. 10,000 was perceived as too costly by many small and medium sized corporate users.

The joke ran that PDF stood for Painfully Depleted Funds. By slashing the cost of the entry level "Elements'' Adobe may well retain its grip on to this end of the market. And it has also strengthened the other end because in the last few days both Autodesk's "AutoCad'' and Parametric's "Windchill'' engineering design tools have announced close compatibility with "Acrobat Professional.''

The new versions are expected to become available in India next month simultaneously with the global launch.

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