Macromedia's Flash
Macromedia has proven quietly and successfully that it's a small company that can compete with the big guys.
First, Macromedia reinvented animation on the Internet with Flash. Following this success, they expanded Flash to directly take on technologies such as ActiveX and Java. Now, Macromedia has set its sights for Flash squarely on the mobile market.
Flash has an advantage over other competing tools. Macromedia's Flash Player, the tool that plays the Flash content in your web browser, has always leaned towards supporting the lowest common denominator. Delivering a high impact tool that runs on very little processing power has almost become a trademark for the Flash program.
Macromedia has two products that it is selling to the mobile community:
- Flash Lite
- Flash Cast
Flash Lite is the development tool that Macromedia has released in conjunction with their Flash authoring environment. Through Flash Lite you can develop interactive applications, news feeds, games, and other rich Flash solutions. Flash Lite has been successfully received in Japan and is this year coming to the US.
Flash Cast is a slimmed down version of Flash Lite. It was primarily written to demonstrate how Flash can be leveraged within a cell phone environment.
While Macromedia is certainly the smallest company in this group, they can't be discounted. So far, Flash has already displaced Microsoft and Sun's similar products for the web browser. Don't be surprised if they perform the same trick in the cell phone market.