March 17, 2008

Microsoft Adopts Flash Lite For Windows Mobile As a Stopgap Measure

Erick Schonfeld

30 comments »

Flash Lite for mobile phones might not be good enough for Steve Jobs, but Microsoft is less picky. It is licensing Flash Lite for Windows Mobile. This is an acknowledgment of two things: there are a lot of developers and existing Websites out there that work with Flash, and the mobile version of Microsoft’s own competing Silverlight software is nowhere near ready to be deployed.

On the one hand, Microsoft is just being practical here. Adobe’s Flash is ubiquitous on the Web, especially for video. Even if Flash Lite is a compromise (it doesn’t run any apps or Web pages built with Adobe’s Flex tools, for instance), it does run on 500 million mobile phones already. Microsoft cannot ignore all of the apps being built for Flash Lite. (Jobs can because it is more important to him to protect the integrity of the iPhone experience by controlling it tightly).

But for Microsoft, this is just a stopgap measure until it can gain more traction for Silverlight, its Flash-competitor. The mobile version of Sliverlight 2.0 does not ship until the second quarter. Making WinMo more capable won’t detract from Silverlight’s appeal. There is a desperate need to get a full Flash-like experience on a mobile device. Flash itself is supposedly too slow on mobile phones. That leaves an opening for Microsoft to win over converts to Silverlight by bringing video, animation, and other rich-media experiences to mobile. Nokia is already on board.

Apple or Google could also try to fill the gap left by Flash on mobile devices. Or Adobe could get its act together and bring a more fully-featured version of Flash to mobile. The only other option is to wait a few years for mobile devices to become as powerful as today’s laptops so that they can display regular Flash Websites. Which option do readers think will win out in the end?

Who Will Be the First to Bring A True Flash-Like Experience To Mobile Devices?

Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 8:59 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles, Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

SmoothSpan Blog

March 17th, 2008 at 9:24 am

WIRELESS « Daily Marauder

March 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

Dana Gardner’s BriefingsDirect mobile edition

March 19th, 2008 at 4:57 am

Expert Texture

March 19th, 2008 at 8:54 am

February / March 2008 Recap - Jon Galloway

April 10th, 2008 at 2:06 am

Adobe’s Open Screen Project: Write Once, Flash Everywhere

April 30th, 2008 at 9:06 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Roy

March 17th, 2008 at 9:13 am

I’ll take the “wait a few years” option you didn’t put in the survey, for a $1000, Alex.
Peter

March 17th, 2008 at 9:14 am

Interesting because I had just read about Nokia’s agreement with MS to license Sliverlight. But they made a point of saying that they would still be continuing agreements regarding Flash and other technologies.
Kaiyzen

March 17th, 2008 at 9:15 am

Also dont forget that there is a possibility.., though small one.., that this is a move to curb MS anti-trust advocates. If the Silverlight hype maintains its momentum through the year we are not that far from having Silverlight as ubiquitous as Flash.

By MS having Flash on their devices ahead of time they would be pre-empting any argument that they are being unfair or discriminatory towards competing technology on their platform(s).
Todd

March 17th, 2008 at 9:24 am

I actually hope this is helps end Flash in general. Flash content cannot be semantically read by other machines, and it is a leading contributor to the “walled gardens” quagmire.

To mobile developers: Please observe open web standards. No Flash. No Silverlight. Just clean XHTTP and CSS. Please make your data “semantic web” friendly and machine readable.
T.Man

March 17th, 2008 at 9:26 am

Silverlight is great! I like the tatoo demo at http://www.iopus.com/imacros/demo/v6/silverlight/
113.com

March 17th, 2008 at 9:26 am

Microsoft is too smart with this move. Really.
Andy

March 17th, 2008 at 9:43 am

@ Kaiyzen… interesting point on anti-trust stance.

But I also see it heralds a new confidence in Microsoft teams that they are genuinely driving next generation technology, be it Silverlight or Data/Cloud technologies. They can support Flash Lite for now, and still have a good stab at giving users and developers even better tools with their inhouse offering.
james

March 17th, 2008 at 9:51 am

We’ll see if apple’s gamble will pay off or not. I think flash is the way to to go. And any phone, who is able to run it (not the lite stuff). Could have an edge.
Hoho

March 17th, 2008 at 9:53 am

That’s becoming more and more serious. I read techcrunch everyday and day by day TC is missing the stories that it used to cover faster than anyone else.

This story has been out for hours and it’s only now that it appears on TC. Competition is growing and we don’t wanna see TC losing the edge. I came for breaking and leading stories but more and more I can see TC only “following the rest”.
Michael

March 17th, 2008 at 10:08 am

My perspective, as a developer of a SL2 web application is this. I would like it very much to see SL running on the mobile phones. When I thoguth of a technology to use, SL vs Flash/Flex vs Ajax vs JavaFX, the promise that SL will one day run on the mobile phones was a key factor. One of the reasons why it is so, is revenue. It is hard to charge people for a web application. People reject it. On the other hand people do pay for mobile applications. So having something that will use the same source and run on a browser and on a mobile, is a winner to me.

Regarding timing of SL2 on mobile, let me tell this. I was working on SL1.1 Alfa since August. In september there was a refresh. SL2 is basically the same SL1.1 renamed, but Beta1 is a huge leap from Alfa. Huge. I shall have lots of my custom code go away, because of the new controls they provide. SL2 talks cross-domain, meaning the browser based applciation can call web services out there. Given ease of C# developement compared to Javascript (personal view), rich application is now easy to write, and it will be fast for user and easy for the server traffic. My server will basically only serve those ads

The speed of their progress makes me believe they are serious about SL and SL mobile.

So my money, literally, is on Silverlight 2.0 and SL2 mobile.
Your Daddy

March 17th, 2008 at 10:22 am

We probably won’t be able to enjoy this till WM7 comes out. I doubt WM6.X will incluude a new browser.
Sundar Krishnamurthy

March 17th, 2008 at 10:35 am

Slightly tangential — rather than buy Yahoo, I think MSFT should spend their money buying Adobe. Great line of products, tremendous technologies, perfectly inline with the engineering driven org at MSFT. The synergy will be stellar.
Scott

March 17th, 2008 at 10:38 am

Silverlight will outperform Flash for streaming video, thanks to the deal with Move Networks. The Move Plugin will ship with Silverlight.
ori

March 17th, 2008 at 10:42 am

agree
Sean

March 17th, 2008 at 10:45 am

@9. Hoho

Out for ‘hours’? Honestly, does it really matter if you find out about this 90 minutes later than the next guy When they’re days late to story, then I’ll care.
Hagia-Sophia.net

March 17th, 2008 at 10:50 am

Adobe is my vote… The own the flash… They can make it even better…
Kaiyzen

March 17th, 2008 at 11:05 am

Hoho quit your whining.., competition is a great thing, just like Silverlight vs. Flash

TC, GigaOM, Venturebeat, etc are great not just because of breaking news.., but acting as precise aggregators of tech related news. Instead of me having to read 20 sites.., I just have to ready through 4/5 to get the daily gist of what has happened.

Michael, thanks for pointing out the HUGE leap with the latest SL2 beta 1 release. The controls released are pretty nice as well as the “deep zoom” integration and built in smarts for serving video that removes one more thing a developer has to worry about. You pointed out you like doing C# more than JS.., dont forget you can program in C#, JS, and IronPython.., and I would not be suprised if they add other languages/flavors in the mix down the line.
VitalB

March 17th, 2008 at 11:05 am

Hey T. Man

If you think http://www.iopus.com/imacros/demo/v6/silverlight/ is a brilliant example of Silverlight in action, I only have one (Flash made) thing to say…

http://www.crustydemons.co.uk/.....ilverlight blows
BA

March 17th, 2008 at 11:07 am

If only people used Windows Mobile or if there was any growth potential.
VitalB

March 17th, 2008 at 11:08 am

Hey Moderator!

The linkifier missed the space in that URL (my bad!). Can you please add a %20 before the ‘blows’? And of course, don’t publish this!
Jop

March 17th, 2008 at 11:11 am

@15. Sean
Hoho is right, I’ve noticed that too. Having said that, this just indicates that TC must grow, get some more editors to bring on better and more stories or probably do like webworkerdaily( http://webworkerdaily.com/2008.....is-hiring/ )

Find some bloggers to write about the less important news while mike and erick dig out the breaking and origibal stories. if TC start losing readers, the empire will fall.

You’re right in saying it’s just a matter of hours but this is how things start…min..hours ….days until it falls into residue.

Sure Mike will find the right formula.
tomec

March 17th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

i vote for andobe
Asad

March 17th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

Why would adobe give them the license when its just a stepping stone for Microsoft to beat them? I’m tired of Adobe making stupid moves left and right. They are acting like a behemoth company unable to adjust to the reality of the new web world. They are just plain lost.
Sudoku Maniac

March 17th, 2008 at 9:40 pm

thank god.. they did not enforce silver light