Switching costsweight 15Files, workflows, plugins, and a career of muscle memory are built around Creative Cloud; enterprises are embedded in Experience Cloud.
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Network effectsweight 15PDF as a standard and a large creator community add some compounding, short of a true network.
5
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Scale & cost advantageweight 12The largest creative-software vendor by a wide margin.
7
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Brand & pricing powerweight 12Photoshop is a verb; subscription pricing has held through two decades of complaints.
8
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Cornered resourceweight 12PDF, the type library, and a generative model trained on licensed content.
7
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Distribution controlweight 12Direct subscriptions and enterprise sales; no owned platform surface.
6
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Disruption resilienceweight 12Canva, Figma, and generative tools attack the core from below and from the side at once.
4
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Independenceweight 10Few dependencies; the failed Figma acquisition shows regulators are watching.