Upgrades help lift Adobe profits

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Software company Adobe has reported a 21% jump in fourth-quarter profit thanks to record revenue on the back of a number of software releases in 2007.

Adobe has seen sales increase since April thanks to new products and upgrades of its best-known software.

Net income for the three months to December was $222.2m (£110m) against $183.2m a year ago.

The maker of Acrobat, Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator software left its earnings outlook for 2008 unchanged.

Revenue in the quarter grew 34% to $911m, helped by strong sales of software for photographic editing and for building online sites.

'Solid' results

New products over the summer have included Visual Communicator 3 software, launched in June, which creates video broadcasts.

"The results look solid," said Steve Ashley, an analyst at Robert Baird.

Adobe forecast first-quarter revenues of $855m-$885m, down from the recently completed quarter.

In October, Adobe said it was to enter the word processing market by acquiring Virtual Ubiquity.

It means Adobe will own the online word processor Buzzword, which allows a number of people to edit a document online.