After returning from 3GSM I had sometime to think about the Adobe announcements about Flash Cast, Flash Home and Flash Lite 3.

Flash Cast is a client/server solution for operators and Swedish operator Telenore will do a first trial in Europe. I had a chat with some people at NTTDoCoMo about their Flash Cast service called i-Channel. It was impressive to know the following information:

• Reaching about 10 millions subscribers in less then 1.5 years
• Almost all new mobile phone released by NTTDoCoMo are i-Channel enabled. You have one week to try it out for free and then you can decide to subscribe to the channels. I got a NTTDoCoMo mobile phone catalog and all the phones have the service. The interesting comment from the NTTDoCoMo gusy was that many older customers subscribe to the service because its easy of use. Channels subscription is about 1 Euro per month.

Flash Home seams a great proposition for Operators that want to brand their phones. As you know many operators customize their phone UI. Sometime a littel too much. But the Flash Home will allow to provide content to the front screen. This products is in competition with the UIOne of Qualcomm and many other applications that provide similar functionalities.
Flash Lite 3 was announces with the support of Flash Video. Full details are not availble yet but just looking at what Flash Video means for the web it could become a great proposition and will attract more developers and companies to consider Flash Lite. Here there are some consideration to make. First, do not think you can stream high quality DVD like video using Flash Lite 3. Of course you will need to deal with the mobile phone and wireless network capabilities. Second consideration is that video content can be created and available both on the web and mobile without the need to trans code video. Seams a
big step forward convergence.

Handango, had also a press release about their initiative of Flash Lite catalog.

At the Boston Adobe Mobile and Device User Group we are having some discussion on features we would like to see in next Flash Lite 3 release, so if you are interested please join the UG.

Talked to Motorola, they are considering seriously to “integrate” Flash Lite in their phone. Interesting and funny at the same time since the guy who I asked to, he said: “are you a Flash Lite developer?”
I played with the LG Prada, really cool, back and white Flash Lite UI.

Sony Ericsson, many new phones and they are planning to add more Flash Lite capabilities in the near future. Many of the new phones can change the front menu themes which are created in Flash Lite.
Nokia, many new phones. Some are adding wallpapers/screensavers capabilities. Also future phones will have Flash Lite 2.1.
So, many news a lot of potential for this year. I think Flash Lite is gaining traction and more and more people/companies are looking at it as a valuable solution for mobile development, especially for its cross platform capabilities.

Also I met some other Flash Lite developers and they were all great people. We had great discussions and great bar hopping!!

Alessandro