The Flash Mobile Advantage

A post up about Jeff Smith from Smule and why he won’t ever target Android.

Smith is part of a small but vocal chorus of app developers who say they don’t want to move to Android, even though it is growing quickly. His complaints: He doesn’t like the way the store merchandises its wares, and he doesn’t want to have to create different apps for each handset Android supports.

To me, that helps show the value proposition of Flash on mobile devices. You’re going to have to create custom Flash mobile content for each device. It’s not going to be write once, run everywhere. But you’re not going to have to rewrite an app from scratch and you’ll be able to use the same technologies and tools across multiple platforms which means you can crank out applications faster and make sure they’re higher quality.

As developers get more sophisticated, just like agencies have their own frameworks to give them a head start on the apps they build, you’ll see frameworks that decrease the time to market of mobile applications for different sized screens and different functionality. But the key is being able to use the same tools, the same language, and the same platform so that you can easily tweak and write those applications for multiple platforms.

Related posts:

  1. AIR and Flash Player coming for Android and Mobile Devices
  2. Flash Penetration on Mobile Devices
  3. HTC Hero is the First Android Phone with Flash Support
  4. Flash Player Gets Even More Reach on Mobile Devices
  5. Flash Player on the Palm Pre and the $10 million Open Screen Project Fund
  • Jack So

    Yep, that’s why flash now is for iPhone. I have been waiting this magical moment for 3 years! As a old flasher since 6.0 version, really happy that I could deploy flash on iphone now!!

  • http://www.thoughtdelimited.org/thoughts Brian Swartzfager

    I’ve just started exploring the Android SDK and going through the tutorials, so I don’t know enough yet to be an “expert” on the matter, but I don’t think the perception that you have to rewrite your Android app for each handset is legit. If your app requires functionality that only exists in more recent versions of the Android OS/API, then yes, there will be some handsets that are unable to run your app: that’s just something you have to plan for.

    As it so happens, some aspects of Android development seem quite similar to Flex development, such as the use of XML to describe the visual layout that is then complied down to Java (where in Flex it would be compiled down to AS).

  • ryanstewart

    @Brian, thanks for chiming in. The same thing happens with the iPhone, if you target the most recent SDK, everyone has to update their software.

    What do you think of Android so far?

    =Ryan
    ryan@adobe.com

  • http://www.thoughtdelimited.org/thoughts Brian Swartzfager

    @Ryan: You mean as a development platform? I’ve only put in about 10 hours or so going through the docs and some of the tutorials (and in no particular order), so I don’t have enough of a grasp of it to give an informed opinion.

    But given what I’ve seen so far, I suspect that any Flex developer who’s comfortable with Java would be able to pick it up pretty quickly. Not only is the use of XML to define ViewGroup container objects and View objects similar to Flex, but it looks like most actions are accomplished through the broadcasting and receiving of event messages (called “intents”).

    The developer.android.com website is probably the best place to go to learn more.