Adobe keen on tie-ups with Korean tech firms

Eager to ride the wave of mobile revolution that has swept Korea, the chief of Adobe Systems said he aims to double the firm’s revenues here through strong partnerships with local firms.

“The goal (of my visit) is to visit significant partners as well as customers because business in Korea continues to grow quite significantly,” Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer of Adobe Systems Inc., said in a press conference in downtown Seoul on Wednesday.

According to Narayen, over half of Adobe’s revenues come from outside the U.S., with the emerging market growing quickly compared to the U.S. and other European countries.

Narayen was visiting Seoul for the first time, accompanied by two vice presidents ― creative media solution project chief David Wadhwani and chief financial officer Mark Garrett ― to arrange meetings with business partners here.

The three executives are expected to separately take part in about 10 partner meetings, which include sessions with Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and local mobile carriers, before they leave the country Thursday afternoon.

In tandem with the growing sales in the Asia-Pacific region, Korea is increasingly becoming an attractive market for Adobe, particularly because it is home to Samsung and LG, both touted as leaders of mobile revolution, Adobe officials said.

With Samsung Electronics, Adobe declared it would support the company’s smart television initiative, meaning developers may use Adobe applications to create applications on Samsung TV network.

“We’re also supporting Flash on the 10.1-inch tablet and smartphones,” said Narayen, adding that it will support LG Electronics’ tablet PCs and smartphones.

He also said the firm is now in talks with multiple magazine publishers to discuss about the authoring platform and on how to use Adobe solutions. With the emergence of tablet PCs, Adobe is planning to have advanced conversations with tablet PC manufacturers to support the applications and author the contents, he said.

Narayen also hinted that Adobe will go forward with talks on its support of application stores with mobile carriers, stating its electronic publishing software called the Digital Publishing Suite could support all different application markets.

“There’s going to be an explosion of app stores and this is clearly a strategy we would support,” he said.

Korea currently accounts for about 5 percent of Adobe’s total revenue.

Headquartered in California, Adobe Systems is a developer of software solutions for graphic designers and publishers. It provides a range of tools for digital media creation and editing, multimedia authoring and web development.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)