Flash to be Present on 53% of Smart Phones By 2012?

byMichael Baumert   on June 10, 2010 9:50 PM
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Adobe's decided to get a bit brash with its stance on Flash on Smartphones and has made a rather bold prediction - that Flash will be available on the majority (53%) of smart phones by the end of 2012. 

This would certainly be welcome news for Adobe, should it come to pass, and as a services provider who deals in Flash and Flex as well as HTML 5 we're happy to see Adobe soldier on - In my opinion Flash does have a role to play in rich internet application (RIA) development, but isn't the necessity that it once was when it comes to delivering video content.


I suppose the real questions that needs to be asked here are - What does adobe consider to be a flash-enabled smartphone?

Is it a phone that comes with Flash Lite? 

Is it one that the user has the ability to add Flash 10+ at some future date via an app store? 

...Or is it one that arrives in the package (or is carrier-updated) with the latest version of Flash 10.x pre-loaded and running so efficiently and seamlessly that it isn't a negative in the eyes of the consumer?

In my opinion it absolutely must be the third option and I'd hope that Adobe agrees - afterall who wants to go through the hassle of coaxing users to take additional steps to add browser plugins - didn't Adobe nip that in the bud years ago? 

Given that assumption then, Adobe has an install base of exactly zero right now. That is to say there is no Smartphone that ships today (June 2010) with Flash 10.

If that is true, Adobe needs that Latest build of Flash to be built in to over 8 Million shipping devices on average each and every month for the next two and a half years.

That's 8x more units than the iPad sold in its first two months.

Of course, Smartphones are a larger market than Apple's tablet, but given the fact that Adobe really only has Flash 10 running on Android 2.2 right now, they have their work cut out for them. 

They'll essentially need to be standard equipment on every single non-Apple Smartphone as quickly as possible. Every Blackberry, WinMo, Palm, Symbian and Android device that leaves the factory floor in 2011 had better be Flash-enabled or there will be hell to pay. 

"You're going to see Flash not only on Android. Consumers will see devices from Palm, Research in Motion Ltd's  Blackberry, Nokia's Symbian and Microsoft Windows Phone 7 support the full Flash Player," [Anup Murarka, director of technology strategy] said.

And this is why I'm rooting for Adobe as a company, but I'm just not so sure that I'm rooting for Flash on the Smartphone. 

Given this massive hill to climb, how will this impact their other businesses? Can we get a leaner, meaner, more optimized Photoshop out of Adobe whilst they are doing battle with Apple?

I hope so.



Source: Reuters

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