The HTC Hero phone will have Flash support built in.
(Credit: HTC)Marking a departure from the world of iPhone, HTC's new Android-based Hero phone will also come with the ability to handle Flash elements that adorn many Web sites and power YouTube video.
Adobe Systems announced on Wednesday that its Flash Player will be built into the HTC phone, an important step in the company's efforts to spread Flash to mobile phones. The phone, one of several from HTC to use Google's open-source operating system, is scheduled to ship in Europe starting in July and in Asia and North America later in the year.
However, the initial version won't match Flash Player 10, the current version for PCs, which can run programs written with ActionScript 3. Instead, the Android version will handle ActionScript 2 applications written for Flash Player 9 chores, Adobe said. HTC is participating in the Open Screen Project to bring Flash Player 10 to mobile phones through over-the-air updates, though, so Adobe expects fuller Flash support eventually.
"Flash Player 10 for mobile platforms that include Android is expected to be available in the first half of 2010. We are working on delivering a beta of Flash Player 10 in the fourth quarter of 2009," the company said in a statement.
The Flash support will be built into the phone and not available as a download for other Android phone users, Adobe said.
Just having a check mark in a feature list isn't enough to outflank a competitor, but Flash is a significant feature on the Web. It powers many games, streaming videos, and dynamic stock charts, and other elaborate features on Web pages. And Flash is also used for many more dynamic advertisements.
Adobe demonstrated Flash on Android in an online video Wednesday, showing off the technology for watching a trailer at Yahoo Movies, playing the Penguin Swing game, and selecting a region on travel site Expedia. Double-clicking on the Flash element on the Web page runs it full screen.
Apple's iPhone doesn't run Flash, though Adobe would like to see it there and has been developing a version.
"We are developing Flash player for the iPhone. To release software on the iPhone requires Apple's agreement. We have to make it work great, and need to get their agreement to have it released," said Adobe chief technology officer Kevin Lynch in a 2008 interview. "We would love to see Flash on the iPhone."
Correction at 8:05 a.m. PDT to reflect updated information from Bsquare that says it's porting Flash technology, not Adobe's player itself, to Android, and that it's ported Flash to 100 embedded devices in general, not 100 Android devices.
(Credit:
CNET)
Adobe wowed a crowd last November when it demoed a full-fledged version of Flash 10 on T-Mobile's Google Android phone, the G1. We've been waiting expectantly since then to see Flash 10 mobile materialize for Android.
On Wednesday, embedded devices company Bsquare hinted there could be some movement in that direction, though not necessarily from Adobe itself. Instead, the company will partner with "a global, tier-one carrier" to port Adobe's Flash technology to Android's operating system to the carrier's mystery device. Bsquare notes that it has already ported similar technology to roughly 100 devices. While Bsquare isn't quite ready to spill the beans on which international carrier has commissioned its services, we're speculating that it could be T-Mobile, which already won Google's contract to exclusively supply the Android G1 phone in the U.S.
In addition to keeping the carrier name in the dark, it's also unclear what the product's limitations will be, how the ported Flash technology compares to or competes with Adobe's forthcoming offering, and when the finished product will begin to benefit the fine Android owners out there.
BARCELONA--A full-fledged version of the Adobe Flash player is coming soon to a whole slew of smartphones. Unfortunately, Apple's iPhone isn't one of them.
Adobe announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress here Monday that Flash Player 10, which is the full version of Flash that runs on PCs, will be available on smartphones running Windows Mobile, Google's Android, Nokia S60/Symbian, and the new Palm operating systems. Devices with Flash Player 10 are expected to hit the market starting in early 2010.
The company has worked for years on a lightweight incarnation of its Flash technology for mobile phones. Adobe executives said that about 40 percent of all phones that are shipped today use this version of its technology. But because Flash Lite doesn't allow for the same functionality as what's available on the Flash 10 desktop version of the technology, mobile users are missing out.
In November, Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch told attendees at Adobe's Max conference in San Francisco that the company would bring the full-fledged Flash Player 10 to smartphones.
Even though Flash 10 will be available for most smartphones early next year, the technology still remains on the wish list for iPhone users. But Adobe executives say that it's coming.
"We would love to see it on the iPhone, too," said Anup Murarka, director of Technology Strategy and Partner Development for Adobe. "But it's Apple's decision on when and how they support any new technology. So we will continue to work on it."
Adobe's CEO Shantanu Narayen alluded in comments he made to the Bloomberg news service at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, earlier this month that the company has had technical difficulties finding a workable version of Flash for the iPhone. But he said the two companies were continuing to work on it.
"It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," Narayen told Bloomberg Television. "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch touts Flash for mobile phones at the Adobe Max conference.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)SAN FRANCISCO--Inspired by a new generation of smartphones, 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 in the 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.)
Fresh AIR
Flash got its start as a Macromedia technology that could give Web sites animation and basic games. Adobe acquired Macromedia and embraced its vision of turning Flash into a much fuller computing foundation. One key to that foundation is what's called AIR, the Adobe Integrated Runtime, a downloadable software package that lets people run Flash applications outside the browser and when offline.
The New York Times is working on an AIR application that will let people read the International Herald Tribune in a format that looks more like newspaper and less like a Web page. It includes keyboard navigation controls, a browsing mode for the equivalent of flipping through the paper, a crossword that could be filled out, and video advertisements.
The application checks for new content every few minutes, but it can be used offline, too, with the stories and photos that already have been downloaded, said Michael Zimbalist, vice president of research and development at the Times.
Adobe released AIR 1.5 Monday, a version that inherits Flash Player 10 abilities such as better text rendering, support for right-to-left text scripts such as Arabic, multichannel audio, and 3D effects.
Like Flash, AIR is headed for the mobile world. Lynch also demonstrated AIR 1.5 running on a Linux-based Aigo miniature computer--what Intel likes to call a MID, or mobile Internet device. It was using an Intel Atom processor, and the same New York Times application ran on it.
Making Flash Lite easier
Although Adobe has elevated the status of the full Flash Player 10 on mobile devices, it's still working on Flash Lite.
Lynch acknowledged that it's hard to actually run Flash content with existing technology. Now, though, Flash Lite applications can be shared as a simple Web address, he said, and if Flash Lite isn't installed, it can be retrieved automatically.
"You can package your application built with Flash and deploy it to smartphones like Windows Mobile and Symbian, and we hope to get to Android as well," Lynch said. "If you don't already have Flash Lite, it will detect that and install it on your mobile phone over the air."
Flash includes auto-update technology so users generally have a current version installed, and Adobe plans to keep that philosophy with its push into the mobile realm, he added. Partners to help enable that update process include Cisco Systems, NTT DoCoMo, Verizon, Comcast, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Qualcomm, and ARM.
Lynch also boasted that Adobe is exceeding its goals for Flash on mobile phones.
"Our goal (was to make) a billion phones Flash-enabled by 2010," Lynch said. "We're actually going to get 1 billion Flash-enabled phones by 2009."
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