So now that the hype has died down following the iPhone 2.0 announcements maybe its time to discuss it. As you know, Flash or Flash Lite will not be used in the Safari mobile browser. While this is disappointing we have to accept that the majority of mobile devices cannot run the desktop Flash player.
Our own tests show that Flash Lite 3 is capable of rendering 92% of Flash content on the Internet currently. The remaining sites use Actionscript 3, which is a desktop only technology at this time. So while Adobe mobile technology is designed for the majority of devices, we simply don’t have a product for Apple at this time.
So on to the SDK… highlights of the SDK are on device debugging, a proper emulator and a nice developer environment (mac only). On the device side we saw the additions of enterprise grade WIFI support and exchange support for email and calendaring. Great features!
For developers there is a $100m dollar iFund in venture capital, which is pretty incredible but I would suggest that 10m devices is too small a market to invest in iPhone only C code, unless you’re building something really cool. Building widgets is one solution that enables you to target a larger cross-platform market with the same or very similar software.
Overall, it looks set to be a great platform for mobile developers.
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