March 17, 2008
Today Microsoft and Adobe announced that Flash Lite will be licensing Flash Lite and Reader LE for Windows Mobile devices. Flash Lite may not be able to accommodate everything that the desktop Flash player can do, but its inclusion should open up the door to more content viewable on Windows Mobile devices. Of course, Microsoft has its own competing standard for such content in Silverlight, but with its arrival on mobiles not slated for some time and with Silverlight still not able to read Flash content for some time, so I see it as more than a stopgap measure.
Adobe has seen a number of operators, such as Verizon Wireless here in the U.S., use Flash Lite as a platform for user interfaces. Enabling Windows Mobile to include such functionality should make that operating system a more viable contender for mainstream handsets.
Tags: Adobe, Flash Lite, Microsoft, Silverlight, Windows MobileMarch 5, 2008
Over at News.com, Coop joins the reaction to Apple’s “slam” of Flash, throwing in the Adobe reaction that both Flash and Flash Lite have been very successful, thanks so much. I’ve often marveled at how responsive Mac OS X feels on the iPhone. This was a thread that Jeff Atwood referred to in the post about Vista’s perceived performance. Jobs says simply that desktop Flash is too heavy for the iPhone, and that Flash Lite isn’t up to desktop performance. Essentially, he’s asking Apple Adobe to do the same thing Apple has done, which is to optimize desktop software for a mobile platform.
If you are an iPhone user, you have to read between the lines here because Jobs is essentially saying that Apple wants Flash on the iPhone (which is good news considering the scenarios I laid out as to why Apple might not) but just can’t accommodate it. That’s an engineering problem Adobe is motivated to solve given as iPhone sales grow and consumers do more mobile browsing on it.Adobe will get there. And let’s face it, few software companies have as long a history of supporting Apple technologies as Adobe.
We may not see it announced on the 6th, but Flash playback will come to the iPhone.
Tags: Adobe, Apple, Flash, iPhone, Steve Jobs