Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at research firm ZapThink, said the support is a realization by Microsoft that PDF is an important part of the workflow process for many organizations. Many use Office for their content and collaboration work and go to PDF to archive their work in a format everyone can use, he said.

Microsoft’s decision to include PDF natively is also going to put the pinch on Adobe (Quote, Chart), the document format’s creator, Schmelzer said.

“I think [Microsoft] sees the Adobe/Macromedia combination as a formidable challenger in the market, especially in the Office side of things, and by embedding PDF, they’re cutting off one form of revenue that Adobe gets, which is obviously from Acrobat,” he said.

Read more at: InternetNews