??? 尼徹（Nitro）vs. 奧多比（Adobe）

????挑戰：為客戶提供免費產品與升級服務，同時防止被大公司擠垮。

????他們的故事：很多小公司都想實現無紙化辦公，但同樣還是這些公司，它們并不希望為此花費巨資，包括購買一款軟件來把各種文件轉換成可修改的PDF文檔。因此，尼徹的創始團隊、原本為奧多比的Acrobat軟件開發擴展功能的技術人員推出了一款免費的閱讀軟件Nitro Reader。這款可在網上下載使用的軟件能幫助用戶將其他格式的文檔轉換成PDF格式，同時支持對PDF文檔的標示與筆記功能（Acrobat Reader則不直接提供這方面的功能）。尼徹CEO山姆?錢德勒說，公司現在已經擁有了500萬名活躍用戶，通過銷售該閱讀器的加強版Nitro Pro創收。他說，公司去年的銷售額達到了1,300萬美元，已經實現盈利。

????譯者：Emma

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??? Nitro vs. Adobe

????The challenge: Give customers something free, upgrade them, and avoid getting crushed by the big guys.

????What they did: Many small businesses want to go paperless. But those same businesses have no desire to dole out a lot of money for the software to switch to PDF documents that they can edit, among other things. Nitro's founding team, which formerly made add-on products for Adobe Acrobat, came up with a free alternative called Nitro Reader. The downloadable software lets users create PDF files from other formats, as well as mark up and add text to them. (Acrobat Reader doesn't offer those functions directly.) CEO Sam Chandler says his company has 5 million active users now; it makes money by offering a souped-up version of the program called Nitro Pro. The business, he says, is profitable, with sales of $13 million last year.

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