Unfortunately Adobe is deeply anchored in the design industry with tools like InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effect(no competition on PC),... so they have a solid foothold they are going to milk for a very long time. However, most of their newer UX products do not seem to beat the competition, which is a good thing at least.
That's a fair point. Photoshop and Illustrator are definitely their flagship products, and I didn't even bother mentioning their web tools (HTML5 is rapidly making Flash a legacy/zombie product, and I don't think there's any single clearly dominant web design/dev tool/toolchain -- although I'd argue that the majority of mockups still occur in Photoshop, and slicing up PSDs for the web is still done). I mentioned Premiere and After Effects because they're the other 'big' apps that Adobe develops, and they do integrate tightly with their main 2-- but as you mentioned, Premiere and AE definitely have very healthy competition.
Which brings up an interesting question...if After Effects and Premiere have strong competition, why don't Photoshop and Illustrator have equally strong competitors? I've already taken a guess, but I'm interested in other perspectives.
It's still a trade-off many designers happily accept given the fact that it took so much longer to open Adobe's products and dealing with their sluggish programs.
You may argue and say why compare with Adobe? You would be right in that case, but it has been the gold standard in design for many years and set expectations on how design applications behave.
Adobe has dominated the visual design software field for decades, but in recent years they missed the boat for UI/UX design and I would say that Sketch and Figma dominate 'mindshare' among designers for app design. Although Adobe XD doesn't share the same 'mindshare', the dominance of Adobe in the industry means that there is still interest in the product.
Will this Adobe XD update broaden the usage of the app? Only time will tell. It's nice to see alternatives to Adobe apps though.
It does appear that Adobe is in the unusual position of playing catch-up in this field for once. (Another example of Adobe catching-up is on the iPad where Procreate has leapt over Adobe to dominate the digital painting app space.)
I reckon that most Adobe users use it in a professional capacity, and don't really have alternatives anyway. Photoshop and Illustrator are firmly cemented in the industry.
Adobe isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It may at some point,but not in the next 10-15 years. The last time I looked at their SEC fillings, they are doing pretty good. Of course how they achieve this 'pretty good' is a whole new question on its own. Adobe is very strongly rooted in the design industry, there are very few alternatives that are mainly used by smaller shops or individuals. I do agree that they are absolutely riding on their own wave right now due to lack of competition, but someday, someone will come along with a better offering.
Adobe software is just too powerful to be replaced. It's like Autodesk. You can do almost everything there. This flexibility (and still competing with/being the most powerful tool in that niche) makes it almost impossible to defeat. Of course adobe is not perfect (very far from that) but their software is being developed for several years, is not something a startup makes in some months. Of course is possible, look at the example of Sketchup, there was dozens of great 3d modeling tools and they gained a good market position innovating where others grasp: usability for newbies. But they had to be great on this, good usability wouldn´t be enough..
> At the same time, however, Adobe maintains products with no clear competitors due to their quality. This is especially true for After Effects (for motion graphics in videos).
Really not sure if this is true. Probably due more to "network effects". It's hard to compete with Photoshop or Illustrator if everyone is familiar with their UIs and has all their files as PSDs or Illustrator files. Also anyone who would be reasonably close to creating a good competitor would be bought.
Counter-point: I used Adobe products as a professional designer since before CS1, right up until switching to Sketch in 2015.
The moment I used Sketch, I knew I'd never use Illustrator or Photoshop for work again. Then, a few years later, I used Figma for the first time and realized I'd never use Sketch again if I could help it.
The point is, at least in the realm of UI/UX design, the competition has leapfrogged Adobe. XD is a distant third^1, and you'd have to add every Creative Suite product together to get to second place. So, they've already lost that race, and the trend seems to my mind accelerating rather than slowing down.
I don't think the argument that designers experienced with Creative Suite will be hesitant to switch holds up. I'm the oldest working designer I know, and like I said above, I jumped ship in like five minutes of working with superior tools. I don't know anybody younger than me who has any loyalty whatsoever to Adobe; quite the opposite, Adobe seems creaky, and old-fashioned in a "I can't believe you used to use that, Grandpa" way.
30%? There's nothing that comes close to matching 10% of Photoshop's features, and InDesign's closest competitor is Quark -- so don't hold your breath for cavalry from that direction.
Adobe and Autodesk have both effectively monopolized their niches. When Adobe acquired Macromedia that was pretty much it for viable competitors. When Autodesk got both Maya and Softimage, likewise.
There is simply no credible replacement for Flash, if you need to author Flash. I hope that Apple has dented Flash enough to make it irrelevant moving forward.
Photoshop has so many deep features that it's hard to imagine anyone seriously shaking it in the next few years. (Photoshop Elements has more functionality than Photoshop's high profile "competitors" and is given away free with scanners).
As for the rest of Adobe's empire -- it's pretty brittle. Illustrator is actually pretty dated. Dreamweaver -- well some folks like it. Fireworks -- it's the rotting carcass of XRes, an unsuccessful Photoshop competitor. After Effects has tons of competition, and its killer feature is CS integration. Premiere ditto (not even sure it has good CS integration). Acrobat is a joke -- it should be Adobe's crown jewel but it seems like almost anyone can write a better Acrobat clone than Adobe.
Adobe only dominates the photo editing / print sector. They are not the industry standard neither in motion graphics nor video editing. They are losing the web developper market and they could be losing the web and game graphics market too ( ince they killed Fireworks ).
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