Adobe's decision makes sense. The move to jettison its application distribution services will allow it to focus on its core business of selling software and development tools to developers, rather than trying to sell content that developers have created. In addition, many companies now want to be able to also reach smartphone users outside of the application store environment, directly via the browser with a similar level of experience. Mobile is therefore becoming more and more integrated in web development and is increasingly being used as a differentiator by vendors. Not only is this an opportunity for Adobe to leverage its existing client base via a suite of converged solutions, but it is also critical for Adobe to address this demand in order to remain competitive in the software vendor market.    

Since its launch in 2008, Adobe AIR Marketplace failed to gain much traction with consumers or developers. At the time of writing AIR Marketplace only offered 1500 applications. In contrast: Apple's App Store offered 425,000; Google's Android Market counted over 250,000; and RIM's Blackberry App World counted almost 40,000 items.

The store also struggled to generate significant download volumes. At the time of writing TweetDeck, a popular Twitter client, was among the most popular apps with fewer than 100,000 total downloads - representing just a tiny fraction of its more than 20m total downloads on other platforms and stores. Combined, Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market have seen more than 20bn total application downloads.

IHS Screen Digest research indicates that mobile application stores from platform providers and device manufacturers (such as those from Apple, Google, RIM, Nokia and Microsoft) remain best placed to succeed.

For companies that have seen little success distributing third party content such as Adobe, it makes sense to target efforts elsewhere rather than compete with far bigger players.