Some people say Flash is dead because it doesn’t work on the iPhone and many other mobile devices. Others see Adobe Flash as the future of rich content on mobile phones. In the words of science fiction writer William Gibson: “The future has already happened, it just isn’t very well distributed.”
The reason I say this is because Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo was the first carrier to support Flash Lite on its handsets in 2003. In 2006, Verizon Wireless added support for Flash Lite as an extension of its BREW platform. Flash Lite didn’t just grow in distribution, it evolved by adding capabilities such as streaming video in Flash Lite 3 in 2007. According to Strategy Analytics, there will be more than 2.5 billion Flash Lite enabled devices shipped by the end of 2010.
Why is there still such a desire for Flash in the mobile ecosystem? For two reasons: First, the success of Flash Lite came almost exclusively from the Asian and European markets. NTT DoCoMo and Nokia were two of Flash’s biggest champions. Unfortunately, neither of them has a strong presence in the United States. Second, it has not been successfully integrated into mobile browsers. While consumers could download Flash content to play on their devices, they could not experience it within the mobile browser.
While most developers wait for the full Flash experience to come to the mobile platforms, Nokia is taking the mobile platform to Flash. Nokia’s latest mobile operating system (Maemo) and browser were developed to provide full Flash (9.4) support. This approach to mobile operating system design is expected to continue as Nokia and Intel have agreed to combine Maemo and Intel’s Mimo operating system to create the MeeGo operating system.
Nokia and Intel are members of the Open Screen Project which was established by Adobe on May 1, 2008. The Open Screen Project is an initiative to promote rich mobile content across many devices and platforms, and today includes more than 50 software companies, wireless carriers, device manufacturers, and content providers.
Adobe announced Flash 10.1 as the future of rich mobile content on February 15, 2010 at the Mobile World Congress, with availability sometime in the first half of 2010. The press release that accompanied the announcement stated:
“Mobile platforms that will support the full Flash Player include Android, the BlackBerry® platform, Symbian® OS, Palm® webOS and Windows Mobile®.”
Notably absent from the list was Apple’s iPhone and iPad platforms. This absence is at the heart of corporate, political, and technical debates over the future of rich mobile content.
Adobe claims that they are ready with a Flash player for the ever popular Apple mobile platforms, but Apple claims that Flash degrades performance and battery life to a point that is unacceptable for Apple. Some bloggers have posted test results that defend Flash as a stable, battery friendly plug-in. Others have documented that Flash is a power hungry resource hog that leaves mobile devices downright painful to use.
There have been some more recent developments that shine a light on the performance controversy. A forum comment by an Adobe employee on February 9th came back to life in the last week of February. The commenter claims that Flash 10.1 will only work on Android devices with the most recent versions of the OS and with an ARMv7 (Cortex) based processor. In early February, this was written off as a commitment regarding support for future products. Now, the forums are reinterpreting this as an admission of Flash’s high resource requirements. The same comment also claimed that Flash will not be supported on Windows Mobile 6.5 or earlier.
With Adobe’s announcement at the Mobile World Congress, and the comments that have come to light since then, it now appears that Flash 10.1 will be supported by some Android devices and Palm’s Pre and Pixi webOS devices within the next few months. Windows Mobile users will have to wait for Windows Phone 7 which isn’t expected to be commercially available until the 2010 holiday season. BlackBerry’s manufacturer, Research In Motion, is working on a new browser and OS that is assumed to be the recipients of Flash support. No date has been announced for these developments. Nokia has also announced its intention to support Flash 10.1 in devices to be delivered in 2010.
As with browsers, operating systems and even hardware features, Flash 10.1 will penetrate the mobile ecosystem slowly. On the other hand, it will probably be met with simultaneous cheers and jeers from those who have taken sides in the Apple / Adobe clash.
Despite the differences with Apple, most analysts believe that there is room for Flash in the mobile ecosystem. Whether Flash is the future of rich mobile content will depend on how well it is distributed.
