Adobe cuts 600 jobs

Looks like the economic crunch has come to Adobe, too. In releasing its preliminary fourth quarter earnings, the software company said it plans to lay off 600 full-time positions, or about 8 percent of its workforce.

The cuts are driven by poor sales for Creative Suite 4, which includes core Adobe products like Acrobat and Photoshop, which was released in October. This shouldn’t be a huge shock — with the economy in the tank, and copies of CS4 selling for more than $1,000 (or hundreds of dollars for an upgrade) I’m betting a lot of folks decided their old copies of Creative Suite 3 would continue to serve them just fine.

Adobe says its Q4 revenue will probably be between $912 and $915 million, or between 45 and 46 cents per share, below targeted revenue of $922 and $955 million. It also lowered its guidance for the new quarter to between $800 million and $850 million. With less money coming in, Adobe says it is restructuring the company to reduce operating costs and “fine-tune the focus of our resources on key strategic priorities.”