Adobe Brought its Generative AI to Mobile - Can it Compete?

Adobe's finally joined the mobile party. After showing off its generative AI chops on desktop, Adobe just launched Firefly as a standalone app on iOS and Android.

Firefly aims to capture social media posters, a market that doesn't have that much mobile competition. Current solutions include talking to ChatGPT or one of the other big LLMs, using Midjourney via Discord, or using something like Canva, which is a slightly different solution.

The move makes sense - AI is hot, Midjourney is still stuck inside Discord, and Adobe is a household brand name. But... can Adobe compete?

Let's have a look at the numbers.

Since launching roughly a month ago, Firefly saw a little more than 240K new downloads from the App Store and Google Play. A smidge more from the App Store.

Most downloads are coming from the US, Firefly's biggest market with 45% of the downloads so far, followed by Germany, India, and Japan. Though together, those don't add up to the US.

Firefly also monetizes right in app, though it works with existing Adobe Cloud subscriptions so I expected that number to be low, and it is. According to our estimates, Firefly earned $12K of net (after fees) revenue from the App Store and Google Play so far, where the majority came from the App Store.

Like most new app launches, Adobe is using Apple Ads to push the app with a focused campaign and no Custom Product Pages, probably testing the waters. While there aren't many direct competitors, the AI market at large is heavily saturated.

Having used Firefly when it first launched on the web and considering Adobe's access to stock photography and art that they own, I expect Firefly to become an easy go-to for many. If... Adobe can price it correctly.

Right nowm a subscription goes for $4.99/mo. or $49.99/yr. which sounds reasonable, but we need a few more weeks of data before we can tell if that's low enough to get mass adoption.