Kevin Lynch, the Adobe CTO just resigned and decided to join Apple as a VP of Technology. He will be working under the current head of hardware Bob Mansfield. This is a big surprise with reference to the fact that it was only few years ago during Steve Job’s leadership at Apple, that Adobe flash player had been so controversially been rejected from the iPhone. He had later even criticized apple many times for being too restrictive and acting as a “Big Brother.” This is certainly a sudden change as it leaves many people wondering not only why he joined Apple, but also why the company hired him. Kevin had joined Adobe as part of Macromedia, when it was acquired back in 2005.
Adobe on the other hand issued a statement saying, “We will not be replacing the CTO position; responsibility for technology development lies with our business unit heads under the leadership of Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Bryan Lamkin, who has recently returned to Adobe, will assume responsibilities for cross company research and technology initiatives as well as Corporate Development. We wish Kevin well in this new chapter of his career.” Apple has declined to comment on this matter however they did assert that Kevin will be joining them effective 22nd March.
This has come at a time when Adobe just announced its first quarter 2013 results and had actually performed better than their previous targets. This change might make sense due to the fact that Adobe has changed its focus to more HTML5 based tools and Flash itself is being phased out on mobile devices. It has also been guessed that Kevin might be interested in hardware and software integration, while Apple would want to leverage his skills with cloud computing as he has been quite successful at producing software like Creative Cloud at Adobe.
