MEX

Mobile Innovation (MI), the user interface specialist best known for its work on Symbian platforms, has published an interesting article on the emergence of Flash as an enabler of the user experience.

You can read it on the MI web-site.

Macromedia has gained considerable momentum since launching its ‘Flash Lite’ technology for the mobile industry. The most notable success has been in Japan, where Flash is a standard requirement on all of NTT DoCoMo’s new i-Mode handsets. Samsung and Nokia have also agreed to incorporate Flash into a wide range of their products.

Flash is an effective user experience technology for several reasons: firstly, it enables designers to create mobile applications without any additional programming knowledge and using familiar tools. It is also vector-based, allowing applications to scale easily across different screen sizes.

Many UI teams already prototype their interfaces in Flash before translating them into other systems for actual deployment; with the emergence of Flash Lite, Macromedia is providing these teams with the ability to move from prototype to commercial reality using the same toolset. That is quite a compelling business case and promises both reduced costs and reduced time-to-market.

Following a strong presence at 3GSM in February, Macromedia’s mobile activities have been somewhat quieter of late, not least because the company is the process of an ambitious merger with Adobe. With Adobe also focused on mobile opportunities for its PDF technology, the merger presents an intriguing possibility of a integrated mobile platform for interactive applications and rich media content.

Rob Woodford, Senior Manager for Market Development at Macromedia, will be delivering a keynote address in the ‘Key technology enablers‘ session at MEX.