Adobe professes to be unworried, with Jim Guerard, vice president of product management for Web and video solutions, touting Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and Flash frameworks. "We expect competition, but no other company has the Adobe advantage," he said.

Ovum's Rotibi said that Adobe is "not standing still" and is improving the interoperability between its products, although Microsoft, with its still-unreleased products, remains "one step ahead."

And GotoMedia's Chiang said Adobe can't afford to rest on its laurels. "If Adobe doesn't do something about how to integrate Macromedia's products and come up with something great, Microsoft might have a chance in the second or third version of Expression," he said.