Adobe Inc., originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is a global leader in digital media and digital marketing solutions. Its creative, marketing, and document solutions help a wide variety of users, from emerging artists to global brands, bring digital creations to life and deliver immersive, compelling experiences. Adobe is headquartered in San Jose, California and has offices worldwide in North America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia. The CEO and Chairman is Shantanu Narayen. The company is public and trades on the NASDAQ under the stock symbol is ADBE. Its IPO was August 22, 1986. The company reported $15.79 billion in annual revenue for 2021.
Adobe provides creative, marketing, and document solution products. The company's Creative Cloud has over twenty apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Acrobat Pro, and Creative Cloud Express. Other creative products include Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Premier Rush, and Lightroom. Marketing products include Analytics, Advertising Cloud, Audience Manager, Experience Platform, and Journey Orchestration. Document management solutions include all the Acrobat products and Fill & Sign.
Adobe markets their products to individuals, businesses, and to students and educational institutions. Some products, such as the Creative Cloud and Acrobat solutions, are also available on mobile apps, both IOS and Android.
Adobe was founded in December 1982 by Charles Geschke and John Warnock. It was incorporated in October 1983 in California and then reincorporated in Delaware in May 1997.
Geschke and Warnock were employees of Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto (California) Research Center (PARC). They developed a programming language specially designed to describe the precise position, shape, and size of objects on a computer-generated page. This page description language was later known as PostScript. It described objects as letters and graphics in mathematical terms, without reference to any specific computer or printer. Therefore, any device capable of interpreting the language would be able to generate a representation of the page at any resolution the device supported. Xerox declined to bring their technology to market, so the two computer scientists started their own company, naming it after a creek near their homes.
