Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Adobe: The Web in a Flash

Although the new smartphones have raised consumers' demand for Web browsing, game-playing and movie-watching, the web pages are often hard to access and experience on the mobile platform. Adobe has now announced that it is working to bring full-fledged Flash Player 10 to high-end smartphones. Flash technology is one major technical feature not currently supported on today’s smartphone and will go a long way to making the user web mobile experience consistent with the PC. It would enable Google’s hosted YouTube videos to be played on mobiles along with other Flash hosted application content.

Adobe have already demonstrated Flash Player 10 on devices running Nokia's Symbian operating system, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, and Google’s Android with the iPhone being the obvious missing player. Although it uses a downloadable Flash Lite application today, Adobe has also announced a collaboration with chip designer ARM Holdings, whose technology is used by most of the major mobile manufactures, including Nokia, Samsung, Apple and BlackBerry (RIM). On Monday the two companies said that a series of ARM-based processors for cellphones, set-top boxes and other devices adapted for Adobe's Flash 10 and AIR, a downloadable application that runs Flash applications outside the browser. The processors should be available in the second half of 2009.

The New York Times is reported in CNet as working on an Adobe AIR application that will let people read and interact with a newspaper within a physical format look and feel, checking and updating content every few minutes.

In addition to the smartphone activity, Adobe is also releasing a pre release version of its Flash Player 10 technology for 64-bit Linux users. Other Operating Systems will potentially get 64-bit support when they are able to support it and they are reported in Cnet.com as expecting to, ‘provide native support for 64-bit platforms in an upcoming major release of Flash Player. Windows, Macintosh and Linux players are expected to ship simultaneously moving forward.’

MLB.com, Major League Baseball's web service is one of the most successful subscription services, having 1.5 million subscribers and streaming more than 2,500 regular and postseason games annually. They have decided to leave Microsoft Silverlight and move to Adobe's Flash Platform to deliver all live and on-demand video starting next year. This gives Adobe one of the largest and most profitable video services and a technology leader and influencer.

No comments: