Adobe's Move Hints At Mac App Store Domination

Adobe has announced two more applications for the Apple Mac App Store, and it looks increasingly likely that the software company will sooner rather than later roll out the rest of its flagship products like Photoshop and Indesign on the distribution platform.

Stephen Shankland from Cnet identifies five implications that the popularisation of the Mac App Store might have on the software market.

He mentions: the death of the boxed software paradigm, Apple as a gatekeeper, Mac App Store adjustments (pricewise, when it comes to upgrades and bundles), buy once and run on multiple computers and software that is fluidly updated.

There are also a number of other implications as well; Apple is often a trend setter and the fact that it is aggressively embracing the App Store beyond mobile, means that others, like Google and Microsoft, will follow suit.

Then there's the fact that Apple essentially kills competition from online and high street retailers by offering its own app store, which in turn means that discounts and price differentiation are very unlikely to happen, if at all.

Should Microsoft succeed in doing so, it will spell doom for a wide range of businesses that depend on the software trade (and its fat margins) to remain in the black.