Developers: Adobe says it is 'Game On'

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen says his company isn’t really at war with Apple — the two firms are “just on different sides”, he claimed.

Adobe is focused on “creating content for multiple platforms” he said.

“We’ve demonstrated that we’re on Android and HP WebOS and RIM. Adobe is such a diversified company, but the news is only about that one issue,” he said, referring to Apple’s decision not to support Flash until Adobe makes a decent working mobile version of the once popular multimedia software, a report explains.

There is one war, he said — a battle to attract developers and entice them into creating the best applications for different platforms.

“There’s a war happening for developers; there’s a war to try to get the best applications for a particular platform and to keep that lead,” Narayen said.

In a separate report the Adobe boss attempts to characterize proprietary Adobe as open, in comparison to Apple.

“Adobe’s always been about helping people create content for multiple different devices and multiple platforms and bringing the power of that rich media, so I think Apple and Adobe are on different sides of this struggle for control,” Narayen said.

“Apple would like to create a closed and proprietary system, for developers to make applications that only work on ‘i’ devices, and continue to just operate on ‘i’ devices.”

He then argues against characterization of there being a ‘war’ between HTML5 and Flash. “Adobe makes its money by creating authoring tools … It isn’t about the format, but about what the customer wants to do,” he says.