flashmobileblog.com

This evening I stumbled upon a petition asking us to allow developers to embed Flash Lite with their content. I’ve duly noted the names of those people just kidding!

Maybe I should go back over the business part of Adobe, the thing is we license Flash Lite to other companies, manufacturers, operators and even developers. Different manufacturers use Flash Lite for different things and they make their choices based on their market and platform limitations. That’s why you still have FL1.1 on some devices and you can’t play Flash video on a $20 phone.

With regards to devices, currently only open OS handsets can have their players upgraded. Even if you could upgrade a player this will only be good for standalone applications. Embedding is confusing for users, adds 400kb of data to their phone bill every time they install something, and on the Symbian OS you cannot leave the embedded player behind if the user removes your application. That’s a really bad user experience, and they won’t come rushing back.

I’m again drawn to the Strategy Analytics report quoting 64.5m Flash Lite enabled handsets in Western Europe alone. In 2008 those numbers are going to sky rocket as we reach closer to our 1bn devices goal for 2010. It seems to me that the market is there, what’s needed is really amazing content. Sites like youtube are now a huge driver in the desktop player upgrade cycle, content is the key. Saying that developers may always be locked in some way to OEM platform cycles and operator choices. We can’t choose which phone users purchase or change the operating system with ease, but we can do our best to ensure Flash Lite is on their handset.

I quite like the idea of petitions.. maybe we could incorporate a voting system into our developer site?

 

It seems that LG are doing extremely well with their Flash Lite based UI handsets globally. They’ve increased sales 40% on 2006 and it seems the most successful devices are those shipping with Flash Lite user interface.

That’s fantastic news for LG and its a great indication that users really care about their mobile experiences. Of course the devices were great too, the Viewty for example shipped with a fantastic 5mp camera and really solid design.

Engadget reports that in 2008 LG are predicting shipments of 100million handsets and I’m betting that Flash Lite will be used on almost all of them.

I think alot of this success has been down to the iPhone and user’s newly found expectations. However those same users are used to having 3G, a great camera and to get it free as part of their contracts.

Bill has updated the Flash Lite enabled handsets spreadsheet with the most current information that’s publicly available and acknowledged by our handset partners. Latest stats: Nokia = 67 devices, Sony Ericsson = 57 devices, BREW = 13 devices. This includes devices that are available in market today as well as some devices that will be available in either Q1 or Q2 of this year.

Given what’s happened in the past at the 3GSM conference, he expects that after the Mobile World Congress next month there will be new devices announced by our partners and he will update this information again in early March.