Adobe Aim 40% Mobile Panetration in December
- Filed under: Event News & Updates, Mobile Phones & Devices, Tutorials & Tips
- Date: May 8,2008
Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) is licensing its video-enabling Flash software for free for mobile devices in an attempt to make the technology as ubiquitous on handsets as it is on PCs. AP reports that the company has also launched the “Open Screen Project,” a broad partnership that aims to provide a more “consistent experience” for Flash across PCs, mobiles and other devices.
The partnership has support from handset makers Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Samsung, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC), Toshiba; from chipmakers Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and Qualcomm; and content providers including NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) and the BBC among others. Currently, mobile game and video developers have to tweak their applications, “cranking out numerous versions” for them to work across a variety of handsets and devices. Adobe says that it hopes to eliminate this with their project.
Flash Lite currently ships on 500 million devices, out of the over 3 billion mobile phones in the world, making its penetration in mobile devices far less ubiquitous than on PC’s. According to Wired, which spoke to Adobe vice president of platforms David Wadhwani, Adobe has set the goal of seeing Flash installed on one billion phones by the end of the year?or on about 40 percent of video-capable mobile phones. Adobe is also in a race against Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and its similar Silverlight technology. In March, Microsoft struck a deal with Nokia to put Silverlight on its Series 60 (S60) smartphones, Series 40 devices and Nokia internet tablets.
Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), no surprise here, is not on the list of supporting companies. Since its launch, iPhone has not supported Flash, much to the chagrin of Adobe executives and to a number of iPhone users who are currently confined to watching video from YouTube, one of the only sites that goes out of its way to reconfigure their videos so they can be viewed on iPhones. in March, Apple Chief Steve Jobs criticized Flash Lite for being too slow for mobiles. Adobe, however, is working on a version of Flash for the iPhone, since Apple’s release of its SDK.
Tricia adds: This issue came up a bit yesterday when Sony Ericsson announced it was melding together Flash and Java to help developers build mobile apps. As I point out in this post, by bringing the two technologies together, developers will get wider distribution. That’s because carriers often don’t support Flash on their decks. In the U.S., this is particularly true with a lot of carriers supporting Brew or Java downloads?so in Adobe’s case it’s not about getting on more handsets, it’s about winning over the carriers, which they’ll still have to do. Smashing Ideas, a Seattle studio likes developing in Flash because they say it can eliminate a lot of the industry’s headaches, namely development time and costs due to porting the game to thousands of handsets, but it has only secured a deal with Verizon (NYSE: VZ) in the U.S. This is the exact reason Sony Ericsson is tackling the problem. By integrating the two technologies, it can download as a Java application and then once it’s on the phone, also use Flash.
[www.washingtonpost.com]
more on » Adobe Aim 40% Mobile Panetration in December
