- Adobe press release about the restructuring - http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html
- Adobe ending mobile Flash Player, cutting 750 jobs
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-08/adobe-systems-to-eliminate-750-jobs-focus-on-digital-media.html
- The job cuts, mostly in North America and Europe, will cost $87 million to $94 million before taxes. That includes as much as $78 million of charges in the fiscal fourth quarter ending Dec. 2, Adobe said.
- The company expects the plan to result in pre-tax charges somewhere in the ballpark of $87 million and $94 million, a large chunk of which will come from expenses "related to employee severance agreements."
- Note: someone remarked that is close to $100K or more per laid off employee. Given that the severance is pay through January 31st, and at most two months further pay, given that is 5 months, it is hard to imagine that costing Adobe $100K per employee.
- The job cuts, mostly in North America and Europe, will cost $87 million to $94 million before taxes. That includes as much as $78 million of charges in the fiscal fourth quarter ending Dec. 2, Adobe said.
- Adobe to restructure around digital media and marketing - http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/08/adobe-to-lay-off-750-workers-restructure-around-digital-media/
- http://www.informationweek.com/news/development/mobility/231902688
- Adobe hinted at this move away from Flash for mobile in its acquisition last month of Nitobi, which makes cross-platform mobile development software called PhoneGap. PhoneGap allows developers to create mobile applications using HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript and to package that code in a wrapper so it will run as a native mobile app.
- The second problem, Luh said, was that Adobe ignored its developers. "A lot of the early mobile Flash developers wanted to create standalone apps, but Adobe wanted to build a mobile platform, so they focused on trying to get distribution of their Web plug-in on mobile phones," he said. "There was an impedance mismatch and Adobe just took too long to come to the right conclusions."
- Adobe said it will continue to develop Flash for personal computers, but this appears largely to be a way of avoiding the shock of killing off Flash in one blow. The irony is that the problem Flash aimed to solve-
to provide a single platform and toolset for creating interactive content and apps that run on multiple platforms-hasn't entirely been solved, by HTML5 or alternative technologies. At the recent New Game Conference for HTML5 development, several experienced Flash developers said they're busier now than ever, even if they conceded this may not last. - Walter Luh, CEO of Ansca Mobile and former lead architect for Flash Lite at Adobe, says Adobe's decision isn't a surprise. Pointing to the Adobe MAX conference this year, he said Flash was treated as an afterthought and all the company's attention was on its HTML5 tools like Adobe Edge.
- HTML5 is the heir-apparent, but it has at least another year of growing up before it's ready to rule. At the same time, it's evident that native apps, and the tools that can be used to create them-
Corona SDK, Unity3D, and various tools like Appcelerator and PhoneGap that enclose Web code in a native wrapper-have a place in the new world order.
- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/11/09/bloomberg_articlesLUEEAD6S9737.DTL
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