It was recently mentioned by Mark that Adobe is ending the Flash Lite Distributable Player solution. This includes the distributable runtime, Adobe Version Checker (for detecting versions of Flash on devices) and the Adobe Mobile Packager tool. As you can imagine there’s been some ripples through the Flash mobile community about this, and while many say they saw this coming, I’m not sure as many would say that it looks like a positive move. But what does it really mean?

Well, the context of the drop needs to be taken into consideration. Firstly, for the second November in a row, Adobe have shed around 700 jobs from across the organisation. Mark mentioned in his eSeminar that many teams have had to drop certain projects that were deemed important, but ultimately needed to be cut in order to accommodate longer term strategies and another internal reorg of the company (plus, it never made it out of beta, so it wasn’t a full product in any case). This makes sense and although painful (particularly for those that lost their jobs), it represents life in a large corporate environment.

But what about the context of the Flash mobile ecosystem? “Dandelion” (the beta code name for Distributable Player) was initially seen by the community as a possible solution to content distribution problems. Being able to install the latest player at the time of content installation was a way to guarantee device support (given the right class of device). For Adobe, it meant being able to potentially spike the “install base” of Flash-enabled devices, which for them was an important number to be able to market and evangelise, and through that grow market and developer buy-in (remember the magic “1 billion devices” marketing blitz?). In many ways, even while in beta, it had some success in these areas, although companies who invested heavily in this technology (GetJar and Zed in particular) may feel quite differently. But in reality, they pulled out of Dandelion a fair while ago and cut their losses, so to speak.

But what happens now? Well, I don’t have a crystal ball or hotline to Shantanu’s office, but it’s not hard to work out that a lot of eggs are being placed in the FP10.1 runtime. We thought that a install base of devices that had been updated with FL3.1 post-release meant that those devices would then have the pipeline in place to receive FP10.1 when delivered. But as Mark pointed out, with the complexities of the FP10.1 runtime, it became impossible to be able to just drop the player on a device over-the-air and “hope for the best”. So we now are looking at an ecosystem whereby platforms will control how the Flash player will be updated on devices that are already in the market; through market-places and app stores, firmware upgrades and browser plug-in updates. And these will be mainly tied with your OS – Android, webOS, Symbian, WinMo, etc. But notice that we’re talking smartphone OS’s here? Even though Flash Lite 4.0 has been talked about for mid-low end devices (and will in future be referred to as “Flash Enabled” devices), FP10.1 (for the mobile browser) and mobile AIR (for mobile standalone apps) is a smartphone solution.

These devices are owned by people who are a lot more familiar with firmware upgrades, OS upgrades through iTunes – a much more educated market than what we’ve dealt with in the past with Flash Lite (being on most devices available to the “masses”). Perhaps then these more diverse update mechanisms won’t impact usability or uptake as much as we used to think? Perhaps though it opens up the install base though to being more fragmented in the future in terms of which version of the browser or standalone runtimes could devices possibly have if the owner hasn’t updated the player (and we all LOVE the term “fragmented”!). Whatever the end result is, I do believe that the penetration rate of the mobile runtimes will be as slow, and perhaps even slower, than what we’ve had before.This however is just the reality of the mobile ecosystem, and another aspect of working on devices that Flash platform developers will need to understand and appreciate.

So for now, let’s observe a minute’s silence for Dandelion. Remember the good times and promises of things to come, take a deep breath, and move ahead into a brave new, and still forming, world of the unified Flash platform across screens. Also, a thank you to Mark and others for the effort that was put into Dandelion (a new version of Mobile Packager was just about to be launched!) and here’s hoping that new directions will prove effective.

Mark has posted some stats on the uptake of Adobe Mobile Packager, with the main indicator being that installs have reached 100,000.

Coupled with an apparent increase in player downloads through the Adobe Version Checker that’s a part of the Flash Lite Distributable Player solution, things are trending in the right direction here.

Read Mark’s post here.

Via Mark: Adobe Mobile Packager 1.1 is now ready for download. This version includes some big improvements in workflow and functionality, and makes life a lot easier for Flash mobile developers wanting to package their content for the  FL3.1 Distributable Player on selected S60 and Windows Mobile devices.

Liz Meyers has produced an updated series of video tutorials for AMP1.1 which you’ll fund useful in getting started, or updating yourself, with what’s in the tool and how to use it. The video topics are:

1. Overview
2. Set-up Your Computer
3. Making Your First Packages
4. Symbian Signing
5. Windows Mobile Signing
6. Icon Boot Camp

Via Mark: Adobe’s over-the-air delivery of the Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player has grown in reach to 13 countries, covering 31 Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile devices. This includes availability all the way Down Under as well The new 1.1 release of Adobe Mobile Packager will be available soon – but if you want a sneak peek of it up and running you should be in my session tomorrow morning at webDU!

Read more on Mark’s blog post here.

Have I mentioned that webDU is not that far away? Yes? Yeah sorry about that, it’s just that it’s a very exciting event on the Aussie dev community calendar. Tickets are still available to so get crackin’!

The session I’ll be giving is called “Gift Wrapping Flash for Mobile“, and for those Flash Lite guys out there you probably know exactly what I mean. The session will be looking at the various methods and technologies for wrapping Flash Lite into installer packages for certain operating systems, as well as a couple of extra areas of interest such as S60 Platform Services and publishing to Nokia Ovi Store.

As part of this, I’m going be giving a live demo of the upcoming Adobe Mobile Packager 1.1 Beta release and how it’s workflow has improved for packaging (and particularly signing) Flash Lite applications. There’s also some other news which I’ll be delivering (if it hasn’t already been announced!) which is very cool.

So register now for webDU and come along to “Gift Wrapping Flash for Mobile”.

Mark has opened up a blog post for comment, asking for input on the future direction of Adobe Mobile Packager and Distributable Player (and perhaps more broadly, Flash Lite).

It’s important for the developer community to make their voice heard at these times, so please drop some thoughts into the comments box on Mark’s blog so that Adobe get a real sense of what we think.

Flash Mobile – Be Loud. Be Proud.

From Adobe @ Mobile World Congress

Public Beta now available for Flash Lite Distributable Player
Adobe now have the Flash Lite Distributable Player out as a public beta that can now be accessed by developers. The Flash Lite Distributable Player solution allows developers to:

• target the latest version of the Flash Lite player (3.1), leveraging the content-triggered download model people are familiar with on the web, but for standalone applications.
• and reach millions of open OS smart phones through direct-to-consumer distribution, new off-deck aggregator partners (GetJar, Thumbplay and Zed), or existing distribution channels.

OTA distribution of the player is currently available in US, UK, India, Spain and Italy with more following quickly, but anyone can download the player from Adobe Labs if OTA is not available. This has been the case because of the aggregator arrangements that have been put in place, and which regins they currently exist in.


Selling Distributable Player content through Aggregator Partners

Developers get 67% (Thumbplay) and 70% (Zed) of net revenues when selling their applications, an typical application sells for $4. Applications distributed by GetJar are free and can be supported by advertising, useful for projects where free/wide distribution is required.

This represents a shift in the thinking from Adobe on how to best enable and support the developer community. Developers have been asking for assistance in creating a Flash mobile ecosystem for many years now, and this is all the beginning of that starting to fall into place.

There’s more information here on how to get started creating, packaging and distributing Flash Lite 3.1 applications.

From Adobe @ Mobile World Congress

In what is sure to be just an initial foray in time for Mobile World Congress, Adobe have launched m.adobe.com with some featured mobile applications available for download. I would expect that beyond Mobile World Congress, this mobile site will be developed further to be used for more extensive marketing of the opportunities for Flash developers on the mobile platform. It’s targeted at the Flash Lite Distributable Player solution, so it currently is only targeting those supported countries – US, UK, India, Spain and Italy. If you’re outside these locations, you can though download the Flash Lite 3.1 player from Adobe Labs so that the OTA player doesn’t need to be downloaded.

The featured applications currently on the site include:

• Adobe Mobile World Congress “Concierge”
• Tower Bloxx
• Bone Comics
• Dolce & Gabbana
• Finetune
• Nespresso
• Disney Digicomics
• Zed Catalogue
• and more localised content for some regions …