Adobe bullish on South Indian market

Kochi, May 16: Just ahead of the launch of its new 'Creative Suite 3' line-up, Adobe Systems India today said it was bullish about the market in Southern India, which accounted for almost 40 per cent of the company's turnover in India.

Addressing a press conference here to announce the launch of the new product, Adobe India Systems Country Manager Sandeep Mehrotra said it will provide designers with a broad spectrum of creative options for all facets of print, web, mobile, interactive, film and video production.

There will be six all-new configurations of Adobe Creative Suite 3, which was the biggest launch in Adobe's 25-year history, Mr Mehrotra claimed.

The products would be targeted at the advertising, print and publishing and animation industries, web developers, BPO and ITES companies, educational institutions, content providers and e-learning initiatives.

Stating southern India accounted for almost 40 per cent of the company's total turnover in the country, Mr Mehrotra said Kerala, which had taken the lead in establishing the animation industry, was of particular importance.

The Indian animation industry was expected to reach six billion US Dollar by 2008. It was currently pegged at 550 million USD and expected to grow at 30 per cent per year for the next three years.

As per NASSCOM estimates, there will be a demand for three lakh profesionals in the animation industry. Currently, there were only 20,000 trained animators, he said.

Mr Mehrotra said the company's R&D centres at NOIDA and Bangalore had been involved with the development of the Creative Suite 3 series.

While the company's India operations were growing at an annual rate of 53 per cent for web products, 47 per cent for creative, 25 per cent for video and 15 per cent for digital imaging, rampant piracy of its popular Photoshop software was making a dent in its revenue.

''We estimate the piracy levels to be about 70 per cent in India and for Photoshop it is almost 80 to 90 per cent,'' he added. Mr Mehrotra said the company was working with NASSCOM to deal with the piracy threat.

UNI