Mobile & Devices Developer Center

Creating mobile content with Flash Lite

Adobe Flash Lite is a version of the Flash Player specifically optimized for mobile phones and consumer electronic devices. It enables mobile application developers and designers to create rich, engaging content and applications across device platforms. Flash Lite has been licensed by the world's leading operators and handset manufacturers to bring exceptional mobile experiences to consumers worldwide.

• Understanding the mobile world
• What is Flash Lite?
• The Flash Lite opportunity
• Workflow for creating mobile content
• Learn to create mobile content

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Understanding the mobile world

For a long time, mobile content and data services were the future. But today, the world is filled with mobile and consumer electronic devices. Phones, PDAs, MP3 players, portable gaming consoles—they all make life more convenient for consumers, and that's why the mobile market is skyrocketing. By the end of 2008, there were almost 3 billion mobile devices in use worldwide (Strategy Analytics January 2009) compared to 987 million Internet connected PCs (IDC December 2008).

Unlike the open environment of the web—where anyone can create and upload content—the mobile world is still, in many ways, a gated world with a very specific content ecosystem:

• Content providers, designers, and developers create original mobile content that they can distribute through OEMs, operators, aggregators, or direct to consumer (D2C)
• OEMs manufacture mobile devices and network equipment. Devices can be open or closed; open devices allow users to download third-party software and content.
• Operators manage the network, service provisioning, billing, and customer service. Operators also can control what content end users can view on their mobile portals or "decks" or bill users for content via premium text messages (SMS)
• Aggregators collect and distribute mobile content directly to consumers or through their relationships with operators
• Brands and companies pay for advertising inventory

The world of mobile devices is also different from the web world in other respects. In the mobile world, device diversity and frequent releases are the norm, network speeds can fluctuate from spot to spot, screen sizes and form factors vary greatly from device to device, device firmware can't always be updated, and each geographical region has unique characteristics.

To enter the mobile ecosystem, designers and developers need the right tools and resources. Adobe Flash Lite paves the way for mobile content development and distribution.

If you have cool, compelling, or innovative Flash Lite content that you would like to submit as a candidate to be showcased on this page, send an email to flcontent@adobe.com with your name, SWF or FLV file, and a brief description of the content. We will contact you if you have been selected.

What is Flash Lite?

Based on the Adobe Flash Platform, Flash Lite is the runtime specifically optimized for mobile phones and consumer electronic devices. "Lite" means that it has a light footprint in all ways: file size, memory usage and CPU requirements. Using the same Flash skills and tools you already have, you can take mobile design to new levels of creativity and interactivity. And with the new distributable player solution, you can create rich applications targeting the latest version of the runtime and directly distribute them to millions of open OS smartphones.

Flash Lite supports many different content types—including wallpapers, screensavers, games and applications—so there's no limit to the kinds of applications you can create (see above for more examples):

• Real-time, interactive traffic maps
• Games
• Animated screensavers
• Advertising and mobile marketing applications

The Flash Lite opportunity

Today, over 400 different models of Flash Lite-enabled devices are available, and you can create content directly for more than 150 models. According to Strategy Analytics, 1 billion Flash enabled devices will have shipped by end of Q1 2009, one year ahead of Adobe’s 2007 schedule. According to Strategy Analytics, the number of Flash Lite shipped devices will reach 1 billion in 2009 and more than 2.5 billion by the end of 2010. That means there's a significant opportunity to make waves in the world of mobile content and put your work in the hands of millions of users around the world—and generate incremental revenue by distributing that content through Adobe's global partner network or through client-contracted work.

The Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player is the first runtime provided by Adobe to developers for over-the-air distribution together with applications. The distributable player solution mimics the successful Flash Player desktop model of content triggered downloads, but for applications, so developers and content providers no longer need to worry about whether the device has the latest Flash Lite runtime. Adobe’s goal is to provide the latest version of Flash Lite for over-the-air (OTA) download through the distributable player solution. In addition, today, many devices are pre-installed with Flash Lite 1.1, 2.0, and 2.1. With the release of the Flash Lite 3.0 player in Q4 2007—including Flash Video support—you will have more opportunities to create and distribute content. The penetration of Flash Lite 3.0 devices will continue to grow over time as more device OEMs and operators adopt this new technology.

If you already develop using Flash, there's little learning curve for Flash Lite. That means lower development costs and a faster time to market to create richer interactive mobile content with engaging interfaces.

Additional resources:

• Flash Lite Device Installed Base (PDF, 40K)
  2007, 2008, and 2009 worldwide installed base of Flash Lite devices, broken out by region, country and version.
• Flash Lite Annual and Cumulative Device Shipments (PDF, 52K)
  2007, 2008, and 2009 worldwide annual and cumulative device shipments, broken out by region, country and version.
• Flash Lite /Mobile Customer Showcase

Workflow for creating mobile content

Learn to create mobile content

There are a lot of factors to take into account when developing mobile content, including the device and operating system you're developing for, as well as which content types and versions of Flash Lite they support. In the Adobe Mobile & Devices Developer Center, you'll find detailed information about Flash Lite-supported handsets. In Adobe Device Central CS4—a component in all Adobe Creative Suite 4 editions and several point products such as Flash CS4 Professional—you can view device profiles to access detailed information on capabilities and Flash Lite functionality per device.

Additional resources:

• Getting started with Adobe Flash Lite Guide (PDF, 1.5 MB)
• Getting started with Adobe Flash Lite 1.1 video training
• Flash Lite version comparison chart (PDF, 156K)
• Flash Lite Exchange (examples of third-party Flash Lite content)
• Adobe Developer Center for Flash Lite
• Adobe Flash Lite
• Adobe Device Central CS4