Adobe, which snapped up Macromedia at the end of 2005, has already established a strong beachhead in the telephony world via a deal with Japanese telco giant NTT DoCoMo (DCM - commentary - Cramer's Take). A compact version of Macromedia's flash multimedia player, called Flash Light, is now on millions of phones in Japan. What's more, DoCoMo is using a server version of the player, called FlashCast, to push content to the company's "ichannels," which include news, sports, weather and so on.
Every time a Japanese consumer hits an ichannel, Adobe collects a bit of revenue. To be sure, Adobe's mobile and device solutions business unit is still a small part of the San Jose, Calif.-based company's revenue. In the fourth quarter, mobile revenue was about $12.1 million, or 2% of overall sales, and $32.7 million on the year.
But that number is a bit misleading. Purchase accounting rules related to the Macromedia acquisition kept some $59 million off the income statement in 2006, much of which would have been attributed to the mobile group, says Adobe Vice President Mike Saviage.
