Adobe is probably not making tons of money on DRM licensing fees. None of their recent
financial statements so much as mention the related products and services (RMSDK, ACS). Given the explosive growth in the ebook sector, you'd think they would want or need to let their investors know about it if it were significant.
They only get a transaction fee when a portable, Adobe DRM file (epub/PDF) is created. In today's wireless ecosystems (B&N, Google, Kobo) that doesn't usually happen: content is downloaded directly to the vendor associated device or application. The content is locked to that instance with proprietary DRM, and is not portable. Only when you want to take your content out of the ecosystem is Adobe DRM applied.
Given the insistance of publishers on DRM, without Adobe DRM, everyone would be just as locked in as Kindle and iBooks customers. It is a 'lingua franca' of DRM, and allows you to continue reading your books if the vendor who sold them to you goes out of business. We may not like DRM as users, but without Adobe, we'd have bigger problems and concerns.
That said, Amazon would do well to begin supporting ePub at some point (including Adobe DRM). It's a better format in most ways, and would remove a number of objections to investing in the Kindle platform (such as: what happens if they go out of business or decide it is not profitable enough? or how do I read my collection of Adobe DRM ebooks with a Kindle?).
And ebook production people everywhere would rejoice (isn't that all that matters, in the end?).
