in the last few days, Flash for Mobile phones had some coverage in the news. First Flash Lite reached 1Billion mobile phones install base and then Adobe and Apple are working on Flash for the iPhone.
This last news got more press that the other one for various reasons. But I am very surprised that a news of 1 Billion devices does not match 13/20 millions handsets (iPhones) marketing power. Is something wrong here?
Alessandro
Wrong? Well, clearly someone is doing something *right* … and that company is based out of Cupertino …
I think there’s two answers here. Firstly, there’s Apple’s undeniable marketing power and the fact that this has helped a device with just as many flaws as other devices (if not more if you look directly at *phone* functionality IMHO) become “the” device as far as the public and media is concerned right now. Anything with the word “iPhone” is going to attract readers and traffic to news sites and blogs, and the conversation around Flash on the iPhone has certainly been given a lot of airtime previously.
Secondly, while I’m both happy and relieved that we have seen the 1 billion Flash device milestone reached, I don’t think the rest of the industry will see it as such a big deal. If they are looking at the ecosystem as a whole, and looking at Flash against other run-times and platforms, being on 1 billion devices is just the start. Yes it’s a great number and yes, it’s been reached faster than expected, but it’s still far from being a “standard”. I think the next billion will come much faster
What I think will really set the market alight is when devices will be able to run applications that also have versions for the web and desktop and all run on the same platform with a little something they like to call AIR. Mix that with Distributable Player and I think the news will start to look more favorably on Flash mobile in 2009.
Again, only my opinion
Seems like there are a lot of factors involved in this. In no particular order, and just my opinion:
1. One billion devices is great, but if you’re developing games or apps, how many of those devices can provide a user-friendly download/install experience? For example, up until the latest S40 and SE phones, there’s been no practical way of delivering content OTA – sure, users can download a SWF, copy it to their phone, then use a file browser to find and launch the SWF, but that’s not exactly a great user experience. So ultimately, “one billion” is kind of an artificial milestone – it’s great, but it’s not the whole story. Hopefully this will change now that we have stuff like NFL packaging and SWF2JAR.
2. Apple has had one huge, overwhelming advantage: iTunes, and a whole segment of the market that has already become accustomed to browsing, purchasing, and sideloading content via iTunes to their portable device. No crappy WAP deck, or being charged simply for browsing the deck, or additional fee simply to download content. Users get a great, easy, and seamless experience discovering and purchasing content.
3. The corollary to this is that the iPhone is of course a homogeneous market, while Flash Lite is much, much different. Those one billion devices include multiple versions of Flash Lite (1.0 to 3.x), multiple implementations, operating systems, etc. So looking at it from that perspective, they’re not exactly comparable. This is small comfort, but it’s true.
(The best example of Flash Lite as a homogeneous market is Japan: FL 1.1 as a browser plug-in was the standard for years – and is still the primary target for content development, in my experience – and has been hugely, amazingly, phenomenally successful. I’m not sure that the iPhone software market has reached that level of success yet.)
I’m with Dale: the Distributable Player and, eventually, AIR will make a big difference, and I think that in the long term Flash on mobile is well-positioned.
Every time Adobe CEO talks about Flash Player on the iPhone, you just need to check the calendar, there is always, on a nearby date, one of the following:
1) n-Quarter Earnings Conference
2) Shareholder Conference
3) Event where an Adobe CS(X) cannot be announced yet
only to be eventually negated later on by Adobe itself…..
Anyway, as others have said, even if every phone in this world had Flash installed, when it comes to content fruition the history is completely different. Like Microsoft, Adobe didn’t get yet that users on mobile are not necessarily computer users, for the vast majority of them the process of searching, buying, downloading, installing and finally starting a SWF content is still very difficult or unmanageable, something that Apple instead understood very well, as 15.000 applications on the AppStore and over half billion Applications downloaded in just six months can testify.
Even without Flash on board, iPhone developers have managed to create amazing applications which would be very difficult to replicate with the same smoothness (in terms of visualization and interface response) in any version of embedded Flash I ever saw. The richness and ease of use of the (free) development tools convinced quite a few developers, even those that never did a mobile application before, to give it a try and they did with good success.
Of course it is still possible that one day Flash player will land on the iPhone, but does it make sense? As a Safari plugin I’m curious to know how a gesture or an action directed to the browser will not be eaten by the Flash embedded window and viceversa. The vast majority of online content has not been designed with touchscreen devices in mind, the missing “mouse over” event will prevent a lot of content to be used and be interacted with. Not to mention the fact that Flash input model do not allow for more than one input event to happen (goodbye multitouch….)
As a runtime for applications, I just don’t see the benefit compared to native applications. Flash requires developers to emulate everything of the hosting platform, there is no way to access the native GUI or, God forbid, hardware assisted 3D graphics, animated transitions and so on.
One of the things that makes me wonder: why all this bitching about the missing Flash Player but apparently nobody cares about a missing J2ME implementation?
My guess is same as Darren and Dale,
Flash Lite is currently quite fragmented, in different versions as well as different packaging for distribution, even on single platform (i.e. S60, SIS / WRT / JAR).
In my opinion, we need one standard for packaging per platform. Even if the version of runtime is different, but the packaging and distribution mechanism should be same.
I think this is the reason for success of other development technologies/platforms, like J2ME, S60, WM or even iPhone. Package and distribution is same, even if the versions are different.
Once we get a standard for Flash Lite, I’m sure it will be a lot easier to get to market and get some $$$ out of it.
I hope Flash Distributable Player and AIR for Mobile will change this situation in right direction.
// chall3ng3r //