The following e-mail will be sent on your behalf.

<your name> has sent the following story to you from ElectricNews.net.

The story is available from http://www.electricnews.net/article/10124308.html

Adobe launches Open Screen Project
Thursday, May 01 2008
by Ciara O'Brien


Adobe has launched an initiative to use Flash technology to
deliver rich web and video content across TVs, PCs, mobile
devices and consumer electronic products. 

The aim of the Open Screen Project, which is supported by a
number of companies including Motorola, Nokia, Intel, Cisco,
Samsung and Sony Ericsson, is to provide a standard platform
for developers to run content and applications across
desktops, mobile devices and set-top boxes, using Flash and
the recently-launched AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime)
platform. AIR is Adobe's software for running and creating
web applications that run both online and offline. 



As adoption of mobile devices has rocketed consumers are
increasingly looking for the same kind of rich experiences on
their handhelds and other devices as they have on their PCs. 
While Adobe portrayed the initiative as a way to provide
optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and
devices, there were suspicions the move was partly fuelled by
a desire to head off the challenge of rivals Microsoft and
Sun and their respective Silverlight and Java FX
environments. 



While Adobe claims Flash is "the world's most pervasive
client runtime" and that it reaches "over 98 percent of
internet-enabled desktops", it is nowhere near as prevalent
at handset and mobile level. Nevertheless, Adobe estimates
more than half a billion handsets and mobile devices use
Flash and expects more than 1 billion handsets and mobile
devices to ship with the technology by 2009. In opening Flash
up Adobe is giving developers and device manufacturers easier
access to the inner workings of Flash so that the technology
can, in theory, take off at a quicker pace.



Shantanu Narayen, chief executive officer at Adobe, said the
project was part of a "common vision to provide rich,
interactive experiences across computers, devices and
consumer electronics. A consistent, more open platform for
developers will drive rapid innovation, vastly improving the
user experience". 



Adobe has pledged to open access to its Flash technology by
removing restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV/F4V
specifications, removing licensing fees for the next major
releases of Flash and AIR for devices and publishing the
device porting layer APIs for Flash. The changes make it
possible for developers to build Flash players using the .swf
file format, prohibited until now by the vendor's licensing
terms. 



David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the
platform business unit at Adobe, told CNet.com that the
supporters of the project were "a who's who of the
industry".  



He said there were "five times the number of connected
devices than PCs in the world. The consumer market is
demanding video and rich content across all of these
screens". 



Rikko Sakaguchi, head of portfolio and proposition, at Sony
Ericsson Mobile Communications, one of the companies
supporting the project, said in a statement: "Flash
technology and Adobe AIR are natural fits to Sony Ericsson's
strategy of building on the best of the Open Web Standards
and will help provide new mobile experiences to millions of
users around the world."