By November 19, 2008

Adobe bringing full-fledged Flash to phones

image Adobe Systems has begun a new, higher-power effort to spread its Flash technology to mobile devices. The company has worked for years on a lightweight incarnation of its Flash technology for mobile phones, but it now is working to bring the full-fledged Flash Player 10 to higher-end smartphones, Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch said at Adobe’s Max conference here. “We are midst of evolving Flash Player 10 for mobile,” Lynch said. “We’re taking the full Flash Player and making that run on the higher end of the mobile market.”

Adobe naturally isn’t the only company that wants to supply the plumbing for applications that run on mobile devices as well as PCs. Sun Microsystems has had some success spreading Java to mobile phones, and it’s been working for months on a fancier alternative called JavaFX. And Microsoft, which also has legions of programmers familiar with its technology and development tools, is working hard on Windows Mobile.

Still no Flash for iPhone

Lynch demonstrated Flash Player 10 on devices running Nokia’s Symbian operating system, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, and Google’s Android operating system. But the quintessential example of the new family of smartphones, Apple’s iPhone, so far remains only on the wish list.

“This needs a little more baking. We need to pass the taste test of Apple’s head chef,” Lynch said as he retrieved an iPhone from a pan full of mobile devices, turning enthusiastic whistles and cheering from a crowd of thousands into a disappointed hubbub. But Adobe is working on it, he said.

Naturally, nobody from Apple shared the stage with Lynch. Google Android leader Andy Rubin, by contrast, made an appearance after Lynch’s demonstration of Flash on a T-Mobile G1, the first phone powered by Google’s mobile operating system.

That Adobe was able to bring its software to Android affirms Google’s strategy of building an “open platform (intended) to give a better Internet experience on cell phones,” Rubin said. “Today, seeing Flash 10 makes me feel really warm. It was exactly what Android was built for.”

Flash is used for YouTube’s streaming video, and Lynch demonstrated a Windows Mobile phone playing a video hosted on the Google service. (The iPhone can show YouTube videos, too, but only after they’ve been transcoded into a different streaming format.)

via Cnet

Posted in: Phones

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Seasoned tech blogger. Host of the Tech Addicts podcast.
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