Bob Cringely, everyone’s favorite gossip-columnist-cum-technology-strategist, is back with more juicy gossip about Apple and Adobe. Cringely asserts that Apple is quietly advertising its professional applications business for sale — in order to clear the way for an acquisition of Adobe.

Cringely’s job is to entertain and incite his readers and he’s certainly doing a great job of it. But I don’t think it’s likely that Apple will buy Adobe. Cringely’s proposed rationale is awfully thin.

Adobe won’t bring too much to Apple’s party. First, buying control of Flash will certainly not do a whit for Apple’s hardware market share — in fact, the Flash/AIR platform is explicitly about cross-platform compatibility, which is not in Apple’s interest.

Secondly, Apple wants to develop control over the distribution of high-end professional audio & video content (the stuff that people will pay for). Apple is already leveraging the iPhone and iTunes platforms to that end. There’s no reason why Apple would trade its own media creation suite for Adobe’s. And Flash is primarily a tool for small web apps and free video distribution; it doesn’t hold a candle to Apple’s own video distribution formats and channels (for the purpose Apple is investing in them).

The first part of the rumor is more believable. There’s a strong strategic rationale for a sale of the professional applications business. While Apple is uniquely committed to a proprietary, closed hardware-OS platform, they don’t need to be building apps for the platform too. Apple invested in great pro media applications like Final Cut Pro and iMovie in order to fuel adoption of the Mac platform. If a third party wants to invest in these applications, Apple will benefit from availability of the apps without having to spend resources on them. And to Apple’s benefit, other third-party developers will feel freer to compete in the pro media app space.

There’s another reason to believe that Apple might spin off an applications business — Apple has spun off an application business before. Remember Claris?

Filed under: strategy