Phone buy puts Adobe head-to-head with Microsoft | The Register

An interesting article I found from John Dowdell's (Macromedia) blog from Andrew Orlowski, talking about the recent aquistion of Mobile Innovation by Macromedia. Seems that word is spreading thick and fast about the advantages of Flash on mobile devices, the response is getting warmer. Is the mobile player headed for the same ubiquity of the desktop player? Time will tell, but it looks like a distinct possibility to me.

Macromedia seem to have their thinking caps on, going by their recent history of mobile-related company aquisitons. We're not just talking about development companies, or even those that would be considered competitiors (as is often the way with lareg companies consuming smaller ones), but we're seeing, particularly with the Mobile Innovation purchase, a focus on infrastructure and hardware as well as development capabilities. As most of the Flash mobile development community has heard me say several times, at the end of the day, there's no future in making great little apps for phones if consumers can't get it on the handset.

It's always been Macromedia's path to target phone manufacturers (Nokia, Samsung) and software/OS comanies (Symbian, BREW) with Flash Lite so that consumers don't have to worry if they *have the player* or not - that Flash content *just works* on handsets. The Mobile Innovation aquisition is heading towards that same goal, and I for one get a lot of confidence from it as a developer and business owner in the Flash mobile space.