Previously I’ve described 2008 as the turning point of Flash Lite penetration, the point in time where Flash technology becomes the norm on non-PCs.  This year Strategy Analytics published two reports on Flash Lite penetration.  In January the first report indicated that there were 270.9m devices in the installed base, now twelve months later the updated report indicated 689m devices.

I’m writing here about the installed base, not cummulative figure of shipped devices which is now 922m.  Such is the growth that within 2009 Flash on mobile devices should cross the 1bn cummulative AND the 1bn installed base targets within 2009.

In 2008 we announced the Open Screen Project, an industry collaboration to address the need for Flash technology and AIR to run consistently from the desktop->mobile->set-top boxes.  Even we were surprised by the huge interest generated and right now the biggest players in the industry are members.  I think the most important is ARM who license processor designs for billions of mobile devices.  Put simply, Flash has historically been a CPU bound runtime and to run efficiently on devices we can benefit hugely from their help.  GPU support is also a very important effort for Flash and on devices Flash Lite and Adobe Mobile Client already have some of this via OpenVG and OpenGL.  There is much to do still and with the help of the Open Screen Project partners I’m confident that we’ll get there.

At MAX 2008 I heard water cooler conversations that Flash Lite is dead, probably due to us showing a very early version of Flash 10 running on high end smartphones.  It’s important that I point out that Flash Lite has been a huge success in many ways, and for years to come it will remain a key technology for the majority of mobile devices.  We’re already building the next minor releases of Flash Lite 3, as well as the next major release to include AS3 support.  Later in 2009 I’ll be able to talk more openly about our plans for Flash 10 and AIR support on devices.

Sony Ericsson and Nokia both released new device API bridges to enable Flash developers to access features such as Location and PIM data.  As they have different platforms SEMC chose to create a bridge through to JavaME and Nokia to their C++ apis.  These two advancements are a great testament to their support of Flash on their platforms, especially with Sony Ericsson as they have literally opened up their platform for Flash.

Yet despite all our success in getting the player onto devices, its still hard to get applications in the hands of consumers.  With that in mind at MAX 2008 we announced the Flash Lite Distributable Player beta to address the Creation, Packaging, Distribution and Discovery of Flash Lite applications.  The ability to update the Flash player as required by applications is key to the success of Flash on the desktop.  I believe that it’s essential for mobile and devices too, even those that would otherwise be considered “closed”.

On that subject I think we can all agree that 2008 has been the year of the iPhone, a device that has captured the hearts and minds of many users and the community.  Apple have not only created an amazing piece of hardware but they followed through in software as only they can.  For a v2 product I believe the iPhone OS is years ahead with respect to usability and design.  The AppStore has completely redefined the market via iTunes, “content” was apparently dead and yet Apple proved that completely wrong.  So wrong that hundreds of millions of downloads have been carried out and developers are seeing success.  There is clearly alot to do with respect to getting content into the hands of users for the rest of us.

So, will Flash run on the iPhone?

Yes it does already, I’ve seen it running in our labs.. well ok it was the pub   To do the integration job properly we’ll need Apple’s help and approval.

It’s almost Mobile World Congress time again, the largest mobile event in the world held in Barcelona.  As you might imagine preparations for the event have been underway for months at Adobe.  It’s going to be a special year as for the first time we’ll be there as a fully integrated Adobe team, including my new team at Platform Evangelism as well as the extended Marketing team.  We’ll be talking about the Open Screen Project, Flash 10, the Flash Lite Distributable Player and showing some fantastic applications.

In 2009 we’ll have taken a huge leap forward regarding Flash’s cross-platform credentials.  By the start of 2010 we’ll devices in the field with AS3 and AIR packaging support, and various other additions to the API set that will make the creation and distribution of applications a breeze in the future.

Here’s to 2009, Happy New Year!

Mark