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Microsoft to license Adobe's Flash Lite
This post was updated at 10:15 a.m. PDT to correct the spelling on Anup Murarka's name.
Even though it has plans to release a competing technology, Microsoft has agreed to license Adobe's Flash Lite technology for its Windows Mobile operating system and browser.
The two companies early on Monday announced that Microsoft has signed a license to use Flash Lite and Reader LE in future Windows Mobile handsets as plug-ins for Internet Explorer Mobile. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, such as what the companies plan to do when Microsoft releases Silverlight for Mobile, a competing technology.
Flash Lite is a stripped-down version of the ubiquitous Flash video player that allows mobile handsets to view Web sites created with the Flash technology. Think of Flash Lite as a slightly older version of Flash; the most current version of Flash Lite can't properly display Web sites created with the newest version of Flash, Flash 9, but it works with sites created using older versions of the technology.
As smartphones become more and more common, people are starting to get fed up with the basic Web surfing experience offered by many phones. They want something that looks more like a PC experience, with rich graphics and video. But that's hard to duplicate on a device with a smaller screen, less memory, a slower processor, and battery life requirements.
Enter Flash Lite. "Past technologies have failed trying to get into mobile by cramming a desktop experience into a mobile device," said Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for mobile and devices at Adobe. "The technology has to bend to the use cases, rather than the use cases bending to the technology."
Microsoft's Derek Snyder agreed. "One of the hallmark experiences on any smartphone is the Web browsing experience," said Snyder, a product manager with Microsoft's mobile-communications business. Strengthening that experience, as well as adding support for PDF documents through the Reader LE license, was the motivation for Microsoft to make the deal, he said.
Flash Lite has several limitations compared with regular Flash, beyond the inability to support much of Flash 9. Apple CEO Steve Jobs rather emphatically declared his disdain for Flash Lite at Apple's annual shareholder meeting, saying Flash Lite was "not capable of being used with the Web." Murarka declined to comment specifically on Jobs' put-down, but noted that Flash Lite ships on 500 million mobile devices.
He did acknowledge that developers using Adobe's Flex tools can't build Flash Lite Web pages, although the newer CS3 suite of tools does support Flash Lite.
But one huge advantage of Flash Lite is that it's currently available for mobile devices. Microsoft's Silverlight for Mobile is not.
Silverlight is Microsoft's attempt to rein in on Adobe's position in the Web development market with Flash. Microsoft is fighting an uphill battle, though, in trying to get Web developers to build sites using its technology as opposed to Adobe's.
Earlier this month Microsoft said it wouldn't have a mobile version of Silverlight out until later this year. A technical preview is expected to arrive in the second quarter, but no other details have been released. Snyder declined to elaborate on the time frame for a production version of Silverlight for Mobile.
With Microsoft's Windows Mobile team now having to meet a surge in demand for Web-friendly mobile phones, led by the iPhone, licensing Flash Lite makes sense as a "for now" solution, at least until the company's own dog food is ready. The iPhone has been able to capture mobile Web surfers without any support for Flash technologies, something that other mobile devices running IE Mobile or Opera's mobile browser will likely try to exploit later this year.
Eventually, Microsoft expects to support both Flash Lite and Silverlight on its Windows Mobile handsets. "Flash is, for a lot of people, something they've already invested in," Snyder said. Having support for the incumbent while it tries to get Web developers on the Silverlight team makes sense; "it's good to have both," he said.
Tom Krazit, a staff writer for CNET News, focuses on all things Apple. He has covered traditional PC companies such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, chip companies such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and mobile computers ranging from Research In Motion's to Palm's. E-mail Tom.
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Microsoft began licensing Java to try to destroy it!
Maybe after a long duel in court, Sun got money... but the
damage to Java was done.
does it already run on Windows Mobile? How is Java doing against
Flash lite?
Nice move on the part of MSFT. The whole web uses Flash , and iPhone/Touch is locked out by the greedy one.
have licensed it. Apple has no interest in making someone else's
proprietary tech a standard especially since it sucks up bandwidth,
processor cycles, memory and battery life. All those things greatly
affect the user experience. Adobe has always been behind the curve
in the last 10 years when optimizing their apps for Apple. Why
should Apple even begin to trust them with an app could easily
degrade the user experience.
Most Flash apps seems to be a perfectly good waste of bandwidth to
me.
As for Adobe, maybe they should have a little chat with Sun. If
Silverlight gets any traction at all, MS will try to knife the baby, just
like they did with Quicktime.
So what's the theory here? Microsoft is going to add extentions to Flash on windows mobile that are Windows only? I'm sorry to say the number of windows mobile users out there don't warrent such actions. Why get developers hooked on an implementation of Flash with such a limited market? It just doesn't add up.
This is all about staying competitive with the mobile phone market and not destroying Flash.
Enough with the FUD already. Move along little trolls...