Computerworld on Thursday published an article that examines Adobe’s aspirations to infiltrate mobile phones. Much like it has on desktop PCs, the web-app maker hopes mobile phone users will freely adopt their Flash Lite plug in. From the article:
Having conquered PCs, Adobe is turning its attention to mobile phones. By 2010, it wants to see a total of 1 billion phones shipped with Flash Lite, a cut-down version of Flash Player that runs small apps and games, and, with an update released earlier this month at its annual MAX conference, plays Web video.
But getting Flash Lite on has its challenges. The most popular mobile application platform currently is Java installed on about 500 million phones or 16 percent penetration. By comparison, Flash Lite has been installed on 300 million phones or 8-10 percent penetration, although Adobe expects to double that number in the coming year. And while Flash Lite attempts to reach higher adoption levels in the U.S. it’s already a hit in Japan — literally every phone in the land of the rising sun supports downloadable Flash content.
There’s good reason (actually 3 billion reasons) for Adobe to propagate Flash Lite as a mobile standard. According to IDC, there are 3 billion mobile phones in use today compared to 1 billion PCs. That’s three times the size of the original pie they dominated.
When it comes to the world of mobile casual games, Flash Lite’s benefits are beyond compare. Development and deployment costs are greatly lowered. And Flash Lite’s “create once and deploy everywhere” approach brings a new level of scalability to game development and distribution – so we’re ready and waiting for them to cross that 1 billion mark by 2010.
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