05 June 2009

Adobe Wants To Enter the Smartphone
Market With Cross Platform Flash Software

Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Adobe strives to crack the fast-growing Smartphone market and is reengineering its software so that Flash-based applications, games and videos can run on different handsets as well as PCs without being modified.

The shift comes as smart phones, which are powerful enough to run programs, are proliferating, just as the PC market has weakened. Smart-phone sales jumped 13% to 36 million units in the first quarter, while PC shipments fell 6.5% to 67 million, according to research company Gartner.

"Smart phones are where the game is now," says Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief technology officer. "Our chips are on the table. We've made our bets."

Adobe has much riding on the effort. It has been hit hard by the recession, with sales dropping 12% in the first quarter. Flash, which is embedded in many of Adobe's products, is a key revenue generator for the company.

Creating a single version of Flash that works on PCs and smart phones is an about face for Adobe. For years, the company pushed separate software called Flash Lite for phones. That business brought in $115 million in fiscal 2008, more than double the previous year, but remains just a fraction of Adobe's $3.6 billion in annual sales.

San Jose, Calif. based software maker simultaneously working with Nokia on the Open Screen Project, to make Flash the de facto viewing environment not only for Web apps on your PC, but also on your mobile phone, your TV, and any other screen you can think of.

“The Open Screen Project Fund encourages the use of Adobe tools and existing developer skills to create exciting and unique Flash applications for millions of Nokia devices,” said Tero Ojanpera, EVP, Nokia Services back in February At the GSMA Mobile World Congress. “With more than 300 million Flash enabled devices in market, we will support these developers through the Forum Nokia developer community while providing a more targeted distribution channel to consumers with Nokia’s Ovi Store.”