(14 February 2007 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: At the 3GSM World Congress in Spain Adobe Systems has announced that support for video will be integrated in the next generation of Adobe Flash Lite software, Adobe’s award-winning Flash Player runtime specifically designed for mobile phones.

Flash Lite 3, expected to be available in the first half of this year, will bring the Adobe Flash Player video format from the desktop to mobile phones and devices, enabling operators, handset manufacturers and developers alike to deliver more experiences to mobile users.

The firm says that the release will be an addition to its family of video technologies that includes Adobe Production Studio for professional video editing, Marcomedia Flash 8 from Adobe for video encoding, and Adobe Flash Media Server for video distribution. Adobe says that itsFlash technology is impacting the way video is distributed over the Internet.

Today, television shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy are being delivered online through FLV, the Adobe Flash Player video format, while the technology also powers the video capabilities of social networking sites such as YouTube and MySpace.

The firm adds that video support in Flash Lite will change the way the way users engage with mobile content and open up new revenue opportunities for developers worldwide. This release will allow users to view vibrant video content from popular Internet sites like YouTube or MySpace and enable developers to create new applications across a variety of mobile and consumer electronics platforms.”

Flash Lite will support the same video formats supported by Adobe Flash Player and will directly support video streams delivered by the Adobe Flash Media Server, allowing users to view a broad spectrum of Flash Player compatible content. Videos can be viewed in different forms within the Flash environment, including downloadable video clips, streaming videos, applications with user interfaces based on Flash or personalized content such as wallpapers or screensavers.

Flash Lite runs on multiple platforms, including Symbian S60 v2/v3, Qualcomm Brew 2.x/3.x and Microsoft Windows Mobile 5, in addition to embedded operating systems on a variety of OEM platforms. This allows consistent content delivery across device types, broader distribution of engaging mobile experiences and simpler publishing, testing and selling of Flash Lite content for developers.

By leveraging the Flash ecosystem - which includes the Flash authoring tool, Flash Lite player runtime and an established community of more than one million designers and developers - Flash Lite reduces deployment costs up to five times faster than competing solutions. Today, more than 200 million Flash-enabled devices have shipped worldwide