NEW MOBILE TECHNOLOGY COULD BE REVOLUTIONARY
By Sarah Jane Tribble and Ryan Blitstein
Mercury News
Software developer Adobe Systems plans to launch mobile technology today that could revolutionize how we watch video on our cell phones.
The San Jose company is making it possible to put Flash Video technology -- used by the likes of YouTube and Google to create easy-to-view Internet pages -- on the company's updated Flash Lite software for mobile phones.
The technology, expected to be available by this summer, will give Web developers a chance to transfer their video inventions to mobile phones and could eventually make it faster and easier to watch games and animation on your cell phone. The phone will become a miniature version of a computer, eliminating the need for the flat wireless access points, or WAPs, that have become familiar to mobile users downloading Internet sites.
``We're moving toward more exciting applications on mobile and kind of bringing some of that Web experience with us,'' said Randy Giusto, group vice president of mobility, computing and consumer markets with IDC research group.
In the past, software developers who create streaming video, games, wallpapers and screensavers have been divided into those for mobile phones and those for the Internet. Now, with the advent of video to Flash Lite software, developers from the Internet will be able to also create for mobile phones, Giusto said.
Adobe, the software maker best known for its PDFs or portable document files, entered into the world of video after buying Macromedia for $3.4 billion in late 2005. Adobe executive Gary Kovacs said they integrated the video as part of the the Flash Lite software because large mobile phone networks have been asking for it.
``Subscribers want to do something really fun,'' said Kovacs, Adobe's vice president for product marketing and management for mobile and devices. ``These devices have cameras, music players, they connect to the Internet and people's imagination with these types of devices is only starting to be opened.''
While the new Flash Lite software will work off Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system as well as Symbian and others, the program's added video element could also potentially mean more competition with rival Microsoft, some analysts said.
``These guys have been competing back and forth for years and years,'' said Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis for market researcher the NPD Group. ``They partner where they can, but lately they've been competing a bit more -- especially since the Macromedia acquisition.''
Microsoft entered the mobile market in 2001 and is now one of the most commonly used operating systems for mobile Web browsing, used on 140 kinds of mobile phones today.
In a related move, Microsoft planned to announce today at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, that it is launching the latest version of an operating system for phones: Windows Mobile 6.
The updated operating system addresses consumers' desire to have complex smart phones that are easier to use, said Microsoft's John O'Rourke, a general manager in Microsoft's mobile and embedded devices unit.
``It wasn't about adding gobs of features. It was about bringing fit and simplicity to that small amount of real estate on a phone screen,'' O'Rourke said. ``Mobile workers are people, too. If the devices are only good for checking e-mail and reading spreadsheets, we don't win.''