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Microsoft Accepts Flash For Windows Mobile

Posted by kdawson on Tue Mar 18, 2008 04:15 PM
from the embrace-is-the-first-step dept.
Handhelds Cellphones Microsoft Hardware
Ian Lamont writes "Despite Microsoft's aim to take on Adobe Flash with Silverlight, the company has decided to support Flash on Windows Mobile devices. Microsoft has also licensed the Adobe Reader LE software, so owners of Windows Mobile devices will be able to view PDFs. The two companies are working together on integration and OEM distribution, but Microsoft is still mum on when consumers will be able to use Flash or Silverlight on their Windows Mobile phones. The article points out that Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG already support Flash, but only Nokia has announced Silverlight support, and only on some models starting later this year. The other major handset maker — Apple — doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future."
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Firehose:Microsoft accepts Flash for Windows Mobile by Ian Lamont (1116549)
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  • Not implementing the industry standard while putting in their own competing product would have serious anti-trust implications.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by twitchingbug (701187)
      in the mobile space? Are you saying that Microsoft has a monopoly there?

      Here's a a smartphone chart by OS [roughlydrafted.com] that I found...

      If you believe it Windows Mobile has 25% market share, which, in my mind, means that they don't have a monopoly and can implement almost anything they want to, because there are ... wait for it... CHOICES in the mobile OS arena.
  • I didn't think there was a version of silverlight for mobile devices? Perhaps I just missed it.

    And the deal is for FlashLite, which supports a crappy / old set of API's and is only of use to people developing specifically for it. Getting the real flash player on phones would be a whole lot more useful, but it ain't the best performing application in embedded systems.
    • but it ain't the best performing application in embedded systems.

      It ain't the best performing application on a full blown desktop.

      I was hoping mobile devices would stay away from flash long enough to force web developers to provide non-flash required systems - so that all of us could choose to have flash on or off. Most sites shouldn't absolutely require flash just to navigate around.

  • I for one (Score:3, Funny)

    by imamac (1083405) on Tuesday March 18 2008, @04:22PM (#22787482) Homepage Journal
    miss all those flash ads on my iPhone.

  • I've had flash and PDF for years now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Timothy Chu (2263) on Tuesday March 18 2008, @04:27PM (#22787538) Homepage
    Hmmm...don't know why this is news:

    Flash: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer_pocketpc/downloads/player.html [adobe.com]

    PDF: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrppcdload.html [adobe.com]

    I've had these installed since 2005.

    Note that some flash videos like youtube videos, won't run in this implementation of Flash (so perhaps the article is referring to a version of Flash that *will* run streaming video). The widgets that web site designers tend to embed in their bloated websites do load for me with Windows Mobile 2003.

    The "news" part of this may be that it's MS supporting this, not Adobe as it currently is, which may mean a better implementation.
    • The headline is full of suck. It's not that MS is finally supporting flash or PDF, they're just shipping their OS with it already installed. Like you said it's been there for years, just as a separate download.

  • The other major handset maker -- Apple -- doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future.

    That's because everyone will switch to Quicktime! Oh yes! It's catching on like wildfire.

  • The other major handset maker -- Apple -- doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future.

    I think this is a real problem for iPhone owners. Most iPhone owners love their Safari browser - yet they are denied all Flash content on the iPhone.

    Remember that funny "get a Mac" web ad that has the PC on the ladder, attempting to repair the broken Vista signage? That was a Flash-based ad. And millions of iPhone users couldn't even see it. Or hear it.

    Without Flash support, many web sites lose important advertising revenue. The lack of Flash support is a true shame, taking power away from customers w

  • It certainly wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to not include it (short of any technical reasons, that is). If Microsoft didn't include it, they certainly wouldn't see more sales. (Depending... some people are quite against flash -- but in a lot of cases those same people are also against Microsoft). Silverlight is similar, but of a much different flavour. In all honesty (to me), it seems as though they just decided one day "Lets try to dip into this market and see where it takes us." I don't seem to se

    • Free implementations exist (Score:5, Informative)

      by l2718 (514756) on Tuesday March 18 2008, @04:21PM (#22787468)

      Flash [adobe.com] and Silverlight [microsoft.com] are fully documented, and there exists free implemenetations: Gnash [gnu.org] and Moonlight [mono-project.com], respectively.

      • "Free Software" suggests there are no patent traps to be concerned about, and that's certainly not true with anything involving Mono.
        • Now burdened with Flash!

          Gee. My phone ALREADY locks up, when browsing ("I TRIED to answer your call!), What'll YouTube do to it?
        • "Free Software" suggests there are no patent traps to be concerned about, and that's certainly not true with anything involving Mono.

          Are you sure? I always thought that Mono was a completely independent implementation. At least that was what I was told at uni.

          • Re:Free implementations exist (Score:5, Insightful)

            by orclevegam (940336) on Tuesday March 18 2008, @04:57PM (#22787922) Journal

            Are you sure? I always thought that Mono was a completely independent implementation. At least that was what I was told at uni.
            Independently implemented != safe from patents. It just means it's safe from copyright and certain provisions of the DMCA. Until the idiocy of software patents is abolished doing any sort of development work on absolutely anything is the legal equivalent of running through a minefield.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by CRCulver (715279)
            The issue is that software patents stand against the ideals of Free Software. Stallman has long stood against software patents, and boycotted GIF and Amazon for years. Therefore, the implementation of Silverlight cannot be said to conform to the spirit of the Free Software movement. It's a free implementation, but it's not a Free one.
            • His point, which is completely valid, is that Free software with a capital F doesn't automagically protect you from software patents. Which is 100% true. Stallman can do whatever he wants, but if Joe Coder releases a piece of Free Software that violates a software patent, the virtue that it's Free doesn't supercede the patent.

              So in the end it doesn't matter. You can get screwed either way. Pick your poison.

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by orclevegam (940336)
                I think the point here is more that in the case of things like Mono, they blatantly violate a known patent, and exist mostly by the permission of the patent holder. The risk of implementing anything on Mono (or similar patent encumbered software) is that at any time the patent holder can step in and throw a major wrench in your operations. With a truly "Free" implementation there is no known patent infringement, and even though there's always the chance it violates a patent held by someone somewhere the odd
      • I have yet to see gnash work, and I've got it installed in Debian, FBSD, and Vector Linux. I keep seeing references to it working, but not here... It's a darn shame. And silverlight/moonlight appears to be the solution to a nonexistent problem.

        What about H264?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Adaptux (1235736)
        Flash and Silverlight are fully documented, and there exists free implemenetations: Gnash and Moonlight, respectively.

        I tried Gnash recently, and the video that I tried to view simply didn't play.

        In addition, Adobe does not allow the documentation for Flash to be used for making or improving a free software viewer.

        Regarding Silverlight: yes, the docs appear to be not restricted in such a way, however that is not good enough. Who knows whether the documentation is complete? In addition, without forma

      • Are any of those implementations, free or not, really secure?
        Or am I going to have to patch the software on my mobile too?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Simon Brooke (45012)

          Are any of those implementations, free or not, really secure?
          Or am I going to have to patch the software on my mobile too?

          Security has a number of dimensions. A heterogenous environment is more secure because a disease vector can spread less rapidly; and in a population with a dominant phenotype, disease vectors which attack that phenotype will be more successful and spread much more rapidly than ones which attack the recessive phenotype. Which is part of why there are fewer successful malware attacks on Linux than on Windows, on Firefox than on IE, but more on Apache than IIS. It's not (only) because Linux and Firefox are o

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DECS (891519)
        Yes it would be so much better to replace HTML with something from the makers of the Win32 API.

        Silverlight's attempts to kill Flash will work out about as well as MSN's original effort to replace AOL. By the time it can catch up, there won't be any contest left. The real solution is to improve the HTML spec to the point where we don't need proprietary add-ons. WHATWG and HTML 5 will go a long way in doing that.

        H.264 doesn't need a Flash playing wrapper.

        iPhone 2.0 SDK: How Signing Certificates Work [roughlydrafted.com]
    • I take it you haven't used Adobe Reader LE on a mobile device. It is a fast, reliable, lightweight PDF reader, especially when you compare it to the competition (I'm looking at you, Clearvue).

      Agreed on Flash though, doesn't work for crap.

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