Adobe stepped up its push into the mobile arena at Mobile World Congress 2009 yesterday with a raft of announcements aimed at promoting its Flash platform to developers, handset makers and consumers.
The company announced a $10 million fund in partnership with Nokia designed to encourage developers to build applications and services for mobile phones, PC and consumer devices such as set-top boxes.
The fund is a result of the Open Screen Project, an initiative launched in May 2008 aiming to create a consistent runtime environment across screens using Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash capabilities, the company said. In a separate announcement, Palm confirmed it is joining the project.
Developers are invited to submit concepts for applications, which will be judged on their level of innovation and how well they exploit the capabilities of Nokia devices, Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR.
As part of its push on Flash, Adobe is previewing its Flash Player 10 for smartphones, which aims to bring the full desktop version of Flash to the mobile world. Flash 10, which is due for release next year, is currently compatible with Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Nokia's Symbian S60 platform, said Adobe. The company also unveiled a software development kit that enables reflowable PDF and content protection for smartphones and reading devices.
According to Adobe, over 98% of internet-enabled desktops, and over 80% of online videos worldwide are viewed using Adobe Flash technology, while nearly 40% of all new mobile devices shipped worldwide in 2008 are installed with Flash Lite.