Driving demand has been a new package of software that bundles programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator together.

Net income for the quarter topped analysts' forecasts and more than doubled from a year ago to $123m (�67m), or 50 cents a share.

Sales also surged, jumping to $423.3m and prompting Adobe to increase its revenue targets for the full year.

Digitisation

The company is benefiting from the increasing digitisation of documents, images, video and audio both at home and in the office, analysts said.

To meet changes in the marketplace, Adobe released its Creative Suite package that lets companies buy a number of programs rather than have to shell out for each one separately.

The pick up in demand surprised even the company and Creative Suite accounted for about 15% of total revenue during the first quarter.

Underpinning the new products, meanwhile, is the company's Acrobat software that lets users create and manage documents in the Portable Data Format (PDF).

Many large firms, particularly those in the finance and legal sectors, are trying to streamline their operations and are replacing paper with electronic documents.

Slow-down

Adobe's first quarter is expected to be stronger than its second and analysts are predicting a drop off in sales because of the Easter holidays and shorter months.

That should not rein in growth too much, however, with revenue for the full year now forecast to rise to between $1.475bn to $1.5bn. That would be an annual growth rate of about 15%.