Well, the landscape isn't so monotonuos at all ! In the print area, no one actually really tries or cares... Canva shaves off the less professional users, and Affinity only caters for customers who don't like subscription models. Both have succeeded in partly mimicking and partly simplifying the interface and workflow, but Adobe retains its dominant position for professional in this area. In imaging, Photoshop and Illustrator are dominant. There have been various others, from Cricket Draw and Corel Draw to FreeHand and Inkscape, from PaintShop and Pixelmator to GIMP, Affinity and ProCreate. Some gain traction, some remain amateuristic. So Adobe stays in charge, keeps it up by constant moving around, with spin-offs (Lightroom, Elements, etc.) and dozens of mobile apps and services (of which I don't keep track anymore...) In video, there have always been a couple of strong market players. In the early decades there were Adobe, and Avid, and a lot of specialized systems. Then Apple entered this area, with Final Cut and some other tools. Now, Davinci is also making waves. So Adobe continuously needs to stay in shape and be alert for what competitors come up with. In music, Adobe never really wanted to played a serious role. In 3D, they only just started, by concocting a 3D bundle of tools. Earlier attempts (3D in Photoshop) were a laugh, 3D in After Effects is actually 2D planes and simple shapes with perspective, and recent apps (3D in Illustrator and Dimension) are low profile. While other popular 3D tools like Maya, Blender, and Cinema4D have been soaring. In digital (web and app) design, their role has been varying. In the early days, they now and then suprised users with alternating (mostly acquired) tools, like PageMill, GoLive, LiveMotion, ImageReady, DreamWeaver, FireWorks, Edge Animate, Muse, and last but not least Flash. They tried things with digital publishing but left the "creative" area and went overboard with their Experience Cloud for marketing and analytics. But creatively nothing lasted, not even XD, I'm afraid... So you might have the impression that Adobe is a monopoly, but they're defeinitely not. At best, they're dominant in some areas, but even that comes not naturally to them. They have to stay on it, constantly !
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