We’re announcing today that Microsoft (yup, that Microsoft) is licensing the Flash Lite 3 player AND Reader LE for their Windows Mobile devices. The first thing to make sure is that everyone knows this has nothing to do with the Nokia/Microsoft/Silverlight deal, this deal has been in the wings for a long time. I’m really excited for what this means for the Flash ecosystem on mobile devices. Windows Mobile touches a lot of people, especially here in the United States. As a Blackjack/Windows Mobile user it has been almost impossible for me to get Flash content on my phone. Now, with this licensing deal, that all changes. I get Flash Lite 3 which means I get rich audio/video, the Flash programming model and tons of independent applications that I can now use.
What does this mean? Microsoft sold 11 million Windows Mobile licenses last year and plans to sell 20 million licenses this year. Many of those phones are going to ship with the Adobe Platform experience in the form of the Flash Lite player and Reader LE. This is going to be a huge win for developers who want to deliver Flash content because Flash Lite continues to evolve into the de facto standard for creating rich Internet applications on mobile devices. We’ve got Flash Lite support for Symbian, BREW, Windows Mobile and a number of other embedded OSes on OEM platforms. Adobe is very, very committed to cross-platform experiences and that extends deeply into the mobile world.
I think this is also a great example of what happens when two companies work together to add value to a platform. If you provide developers a number of different avenues to create content for your OS or device, then they’re going to flock to your platform. If you keep it closed then over time you’re going to lose out to more open, functional systems. Flash developers all over should be excited that we now have even more devices we can start creating content for. So go out and create some video, build some games or create mobile RIAs. In other words, Flash on.
[tags]Flash Lite 3, Microsoft, Reader LE, Mobile Rich Internet Applications[/tags]
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