History
In 2005 Adobe Systems completed its acquisition of Macromedia, the original developers of Flash. At that time, Flash Lite had been available to mobile users in Japan and Europe for some time prior to its availability in the United States. NTT DoCoMo was the first carriers to adopt Flash Lite in May 2003.
As a promotion for Flash Lite in February 2005, Macromedia conducted its first Mobile Flash Content Contest. From the over 150 applications submitted, nine winners were selected in areas of Best Business and Productivity Application, Most Innovative use of Flash Lite, Best Animation, Best Business Application, Best Educational Content, Best Game, Best Interactive Content, Best Productivity Application, and Best Overall Use of Flash Lite.
In May 2006, the iriver U10 (later re-branded as the iriver clix) was released, which supported Flash Lite content in a landscape page orientation. The U10 was the first digital audio player to support Flash Lite.
In 2005, almost 100% of Flash Lite enabled devices were found in Japan. In February 2007, Adobe claimed that over 70% of Flash Lite devices were shipped outside of Japan.
In October 2006, Verizon Wireless announced support for Flash Lite, making it the first operator in the USA to adopt the technology. Flash Lite was initially available on four handset models (Motorola RAZR V3c and V3m, Samsung SCH-a950 and LG The V (VX9800)) as a BREW extension. This allows users to download Flash Lite applications from Verizon's "Get It Now" service, but it does not allow users to view Flash objects from their web browser.
In February 2007, Adobe announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona that the next release of Flash Lite (version 3) would support video, including streaming video. In October 2007, Adobe announced the release of Flash Lite 3.
At Adobe's 2007 Financial Analyst Meeting, Al Ramadan, then senior vice-president of Adobe's Mobile and Voice Solutions Business Unit, announced that by December 2006, 220 million Flash Lite devices had been shipped. He also noted Adobe's acquisition of certain vector rendering technology by Actimagine, intended to reduce the Flash Lite player's memory footprint in future versions.
As of March 2008, neither Adobe nor Verizon Wireless have announced the availability of Adobe Flash Cast, per the February 2007 press release for availability by the end of calendar year 2007. In the same month, Steve Jobs described Flash Lite as "not capable of being used with the Web."
In September 2009, Opera Software integrated Flash Lite 3.1 in the Internet Channel application for the Wii gaming console.
In September 2010, John Gruber characterized Flash Lite as a "major effort to establish a mobile software platform" that "utterly failed".
Read more about this topic: Adobe Flash Lite
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