There are a lot of discussion on Flash Lite fragmentation between the developer community and I would like to expose some ideas and probably would be a bit different from other views.

Many developers feels that having already different versions of the Flash Lite player cause fragmentation. Well, this is a normal mobile technology evolution and I do not see it as a big problem, it’s more an opportunity.

One thing that developers always forget is that Flash Lite content is backward compatible. So if you create a game for the Nokia N91 which ise Flash Lite 1.1 enabled, it will still work on the Nokia N95 which is Flash Lite 2.0 enabled. The only thing that you need to do is to design your game story to fit the different screen size and resolution and this is not a problem at all. There are already some articles and eSeminar that explain how to do that from a graphical and code point of view and it’s a really great capability.

Here is fundamental thing: the end user does not care or should not care of what is the technology used by the content, he/she cares only that works and it’s cool!!

So is the developer’s job to deal with the different Flash Lite versions and develop accordingly.

Another argument is distribution of the Flash Lite player. Well, this is Adobe business and so they choose what ever make sense for them. Some developers would like to have the Flash Lite player delivered OTA to end consumers. Hmm… That’s a mess!!! How will you know which player is installed? There is no way currently to know the version of the player before you install your content. So the base line is you know the target device and so you know the Flash Lite player version is installed.

Remember your target the device not the Flash Lite player when you sell Flash Lite content!! This is a common mistake Flash Lite developers are doing.
Another point is to have the Flash Lite player update with a new firmware. Ok, for example Nokia could add the latest version of the player on the latest firmware for a device. Well, mess again as describe before.
So my point of view is that the current fragmentation is on the implementation for various content types. What I would like to see is the same implementation for all phones. For example, I would like to have my Nokia N95 with the Flash Lite 2 runtime for standalone, wallpaper, screensaver and browser as my Nokia 5300. Currently the N95 does not support Flash Lite wallpapers, why?
Having the same implementation will help developer to create common content for various platforms. So this is a question to the OEM, can you implement the Flash Lite runtime across the different phones/platform for all content type that you want to have? So next model might have a new content type and hopefully the latest Flash Lite player.
If I can make another request, I would like to see Flash Lite animated ringtones on Nokia phones!

Alessandro