Will Adobe's New Media Player Play with Users?

Yesterday, Adobe (ADBE) unveiled its new media player with the idea of tapping into the market for online video that's been growing by double digits year-over-year.

The key to this new player? It works online and offline, and it's based on Adobe's new "Air" technology that works with any platform, Mac or PC.

This media player allows users to automatically download new content whenever they log on. It sends detailed information to advertisers about who watched what--that crucial information that allows for targeted commercials and gives media companies a new tool in monetizing their digital distribution.

How big will the media player be? CBS (CBS) and Viacom (VIA) have signed on to distribute select content for the player's launch. The fact that Adobe already has such a large marketshare against its competitors, Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Media Player and Apple's (AAPL) Quicktime, does give it a leg up.

But there's still the barrier to entry or critical mass: companies are reluctant to distribute through this new player until tons of people have already downloaded the player to their systems. No one wants to risk distributing in this format only to find users won't bother downloading the software, no matter how quick it is. To this end, the Viacom and CBS partnerships are a key start.

Check out the graph below of Adobe's stock performance over the past year. It's been suffering through downtime between product cycles. Between this launch and a new Adobe Acrobat software in June, the company's hoping investors will buy back in.

Comments

[seeksome]

I do not think it has a chance MSFT and AAPL has this market I am not going to download another player on my laptop.

seeksomething.com

[tom1234]

Julia --you are not only beautiful but also very intellegent

[Bill West]

Adobe makes a fantastic product. Everyone uses Acrobat for documents online. Why wouldn't the video product be equally successful. Great product will be downloaded by millions.

Yeah nobody liked Firefox either......

[Bill West]

Adobe Acrobat is a fantastic printed media product. Why wouldn't their video product be of greater value as well........

[MacManMaz]

As long as it plays nice with all of those billions of iTunes tracks out there now and the iPod, it should be a success. However, if Adobe thinks that it can somehow convince millions to change to another proprietary format... they are dead in the water.

Long live the open market and competition, except when it requires me to change my mind.

[mythreecents]

"Julia --you are not only beautiful but also very intellegent"

You spelled 'intelligent' wrong, but you nailed 'beautiful'. I'll bet you're
handsome, though.

[Thomas Barta]

I'm not feeling the "wow". About Adobe's media player, that is.

[Tom Bray]

The video format that the media player supports is Flash video (FLV) which is already the defacto standard on the web. It's what YouTube, MySpace, and all their clones use. It's a format that all the studios are already comfortable with, so I don't think that's an issue.

However, I think the real issue is that people want to watch TV on their TVs. Right now, this is a computer-only video experience and that's not what people ultimately want. That's why I think Apple ultimately wins this one with the Apple TV (someday).

[1james]

It WILL play. Agreeing with User 176404 about Flash video. The Flash player is ubiquitous -- now at >98% of internet users worldwide. This fact and improved detection/upgrade methods since v7 have made downloading and installing player updates painless for most users.