Adobe purchases Nitobi for smartphone app development

Computer software company Adobe Systems made a series of announcements at its Adobe Max 2011 conference including its decision to acquire Nitobi Software, creator of PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build. The addition of PhoneGap, an open source platform used to build cross-platform mobile applications with HTML5 and JavaScript, to Adobe's portfolio is likely to help the company's foray into the mobile app development market.

"PhoneGap is a fantastic solution for developing a broad range of mobile apps using the latest Web standards, and is already integrated with Dreamweaver(R) CS5.5. It's a perfect complement to Adobe's broad family of developer solutions, including Adobe AIR, and will allow us to continue to provide content publishers and developers with the best, cutting-edge solutions for creating innovative applications across platforms and devices," said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of Platform for Adobe.

PhoneGap technology has been used to create thousands of apps on Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android, Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS, Research in Motion's (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry and other mobile platforms.

Financial details of the Nitobi acquisition were not disclosed but the deal is expected to close by the end of the month.

In other Adobe news, the company also released the CSS3 Mobile Pack for Adobe Fireworks, which allows designers to extract CSS3 from their design elements in Fireworks and directly add them to their mobile apps.

Also new is the company's debut of Adobe Touch Apps, a set of six touchscreen apps designed for tablets running Android and iOS and offering tablet-friendly versions of some of Adobe's popular design programs. The apps include Adobe PhotoShop Touch, Adobe Collage, Adobe Debut, Adobe Ideas, Adobe Kuler and Adobe Proto.

In addition, Adobe also announced a digital publishing suite allowing designers to directly publish content created on Adobe CS5.5 onto Apple iPads. 

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