Adobe Systems Inc is remaking the company’s software to enable its Flash-based games and videos to run on different handsets as well as PCs without being modified.
As part of the strive, Adobe which is based in San Jose (California) has set up alliances with chip designers and phone makers and offered millions of dollars to developers intending to write programs for mobile devices that use its software.
So far, Adobe has struggled to break a new market, smart phones, after the company’s success in making the Flash software used on computers everywhere for playing Internet videos.
Unfortunately, the software company’s strive for more than one year to expand beyond the PC has been halted by shifting strategies within Adobe and an inability to offer a version of Flash that runs on the iPhone and BlackBerry devices.
While Adobe later this year will release a trial version of Flash for phones running operating systems made by Palm Inc, Google Inc and Nokia Corp, there is still no timetable for a version of Flash that will run on Apple Inc.’s iPhone or Research In Motion Ltd’s BlackBerry.
Even other companies which had focused on the PC market are now realizing they also need to jump into the fast-growing smart-phone market. Among those adopting this new religion are game companies such as Electronic Arts Inc. and business software makers such as Salesforce.com Inc.
The shift comes as smart phones, which are powerful enough to run programs, are proliferating, just as the PC market has weakened. Smart-phone sales jumped 13% to 36 million units in the first quarter , while PC shipments fell 6.5% to 67 million, according to research company Gartner.
Adobe has much riding on the effort. It has been hit hard by the recession, with sales dropping 12% in the first quarter. Flash, which is embedded in many of Adobe’s products, is a key revenue generator for the company.
Photo by Stephen Shankland/CNET News.
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