Adobe plans to shift its business away from selling boxed software to a web-based distribution model.

Chief executive Bruce Chizen told the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that money could be charged for subscriptions or raised by selling advertising, a model that has recently been revisited by Microsoft.

However, the transition to a purely web-based distribution model could take 10 years, according to a response Chizen gave to whether his plans were five years or a decade away.

Chizen claimed that the delay in services being delivered over the internet was partly down to broadband speeds.

"The desktop is a powerful machine in which to run applications," he said. " But broadband, as quick as it gets, is still going to have some limitations in the short term."