Adobe said this week that Microsoft has licensed its Adobe Flash Lite software to work with its Windows Mobile platform. That statement alone puts to right many of the doubters that had begun to wonder if Adobe really had the weight to compete with Apple, Nokia and Microsoft, in the video player market.
The new version of Flash Lite is the first version that can also view flash FLV video files, and relies on the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) platform, which will now form the basis of Adobe’s Acrobat, its media player and of course, Flash.
There has been a lot of comment recently that Microsoft’s Silverlight, which is an extremely close copy of the form of video like Flash video, which plays right in the browser, and some thing it might oust Adobe Flash, especially as new best friend Nokia has said it will use Microsoft Silverlight. But of course using one product often implies that you MUST also use the other, and let the developers out there decide and even Microsoft has been forced into this decision ‘ quite simply its mobile platform would suffer more from not having Flash, than Flash would from not being on Windows Mobile. Nokia also agrees and will bundle Flash Lite on every device as well, despite its liking for Silverlight, which it has put on its Series 40, Series 60 and Internet Tablet devices.
But even so, Adobe Flash is now not automatically the development environment of choice for video, it is one of a handful of choices, and it is only the simplicity with which it is viewed by developers that will keep it ahead as the dominant web video format.
Adobe now says that Flash Lite has 150% year on year growth and sits on half a billion mobile devices including handsets from LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.