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2. Which firm is currently in a stronger position to control de facto standards in the eBook space:
Adobe or Microso or others?
Book-selling industries have surprisingly high level of consumer interest in this emerging technology.
Adobe: Following are the competitive advantages Adobe has:
Adobe could leverage its strong reputation and existing relationships with professional publishers as
this new space evolved.
Adobe is in a strong position to have its electronic document technology become the de facto
standard format for eBooks.
First mover advantage: Adobe has been a rst mover on the Internet in the more broadly de ned
electronic document or “eDoc” space. Acrobat enabled the creation of documents that could be
viewed on a wide variety of computing pla%orms while retaining their original forma&ng. Adobe had
an early lead over Microso( in terms of both content available in PDF format as well as readers
capable of displaying or printing PDF content.
Strong Historical Relationship with Publishers: Adobe has a strong historical relationship with the
publishers and Adobe continues to provide them with authoring tools for both print and web
publishing.
Industry dominance: With almost 200 million copies downloaded, the Acrobat Reader is by far the
most dominant desktop reader. Microso( had made an eBook reader available as a free download
for Windows users but downloads to date had been minimal. The Microso( Reader was not available
for the Macintosh.
