Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) made several key announcements today at the launch of its Adobe Max conference including a new hosted digital publishing suite support aimed at helping magazine and newspaper publishers publish to a variety of mobile sources including Apple iOS.

The package is supposed to provide a way for publishers to create "unique digital publishing experiences" (such as those found on the iPad), find ways to monetize the content and analytics tools to measure how effective the approach is--all tools publishers need.

The new hosted Digital Publishing Suite provides a way to produce content in a variety of formats including PDF and HTML 5 using Adobe InDesign or Creative Suite 5 tools to generate the source content. 

The idea according to Adobe is to provide publishers with a "turnkey set of hosted services." These are obviously based on the idea that you are using Adobe content production tools such as Create Suite 5, a good bet since they remain extremely popular among web content designers and developers.

Adobe says The Digital Publishing Suite will support the Adobe Content Viewer for Adobe AIR and iOS, which can be fully publisher-branded to support "immersive reading" on tablets including the Apple iPad and the up-coming Blackberry PlayBook and Samsung Galaxy. 

David Wadhwani, Adobe's senior vice president and general manager for Creative and Interactive Solutions, says that Adobe recognizes the changes in the publishing industry. In spite of Steve Jobs' public recriminations of Flash, Adobe continues to push itself as the premiere mobile digital publishing platform.

"The publishing industry is reinventing itself and a new era of editorial and advertising innovation is upon us as publishers target new mobile hardware platforms," Wadhwani said.

Today's publishers understand they need to get on tablets and other mobile devices, but they may not be sure how to proceed in the increasingly digital world. This is a smart move by Adobe--offering a set of hosted services that provides a way for publishers to get into the mobile game without making a huge internal investment. And with an ever-shifting mobile target, a hosted solution could make sense to a lot of publishers saving them getting locked into something that could change quickly.

Adobe Max is the annual Adobe developer's conference. This year it's being held in Los Angeles. Adobe uses the conference to make major announcements for the coming year and this year is no different.

The Digital Publishing Suite is scheduled for release for the second quarter in 2011. Cost is projected to be US$699 per month plus a per-issue fee, which scales with publisher volume.

For more:
- see the Adobe press release

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