I was there during the days of Flash Lite and Flash Cast and know first hand the ups and downs ;o)

Regarding Flash Lite on Nokia devices, there are quite a few developers who are seeing success with distributing through Ovi Store. There have been over 10 million downloads of Flash Lite apps/games and they’re able to reach tens of millions of Nokia users in over 180 countries.

As for FP10.1 on Android, I’m waiting to see what Adobe shows at Google I|O and what the go to market story will be for Flash developers then.

Flash for pocketpc was not exactly a success for developers either. That makes 10 years of failed opportunities and burned developers (like me).

I see no guarantee that MS is going to allow Flash as a run time on its Windows 7 phone platform either. They could just as easily limit their platform like Apple to only Silverlight applications.

Flash developers may end up with Android as their only standalone Flash application option for mobile devices.

Totally agree with you on all the great work that’s gone into 10.1 – I think Justin Everett-Church, Tinic and all the team have done an outstanding job on the update.

It also seems as though i’m not alone in thinking that Adobe missed their opportunities in the mobile space – Dan Rayburn expands on the whole FlashLite story and delves under the covers to expose some of the issues Adobe has been facing for a number of years on this front, in an excellent post over at his blog.

I think you’re dead-on. Flash Lite and Flash Catalyst were complete failures. Any assertion that Flash is deployed on millions of Symbian devices is irrelevant because it’s deployed in a way that is almost completely useless. As a developer what am I going to do with Flash on a Nokia smartphone? How in the hell am I going to make any money off of that? It’s pointless.

That said, Adobe is finally getting it right with FP 10.1. I’d say they should have done it years ago but I don’t think the hardware has enabled it until recently – due in large part to Apple entering the game and raising the bar.

But there is no doubt in my mind that the Flash on mobile devices strategy has been a complete failure until now – and it’s much too early to call it a success. I do believe they will do well on Android and Windows Phone 7 though.

But let’s not underestimate how big and important the iPhone is. It now on track to make 40% of Apple’s $55B+ annual revenue. Apple is nearing Microsoft size and has over $40B in the bank. The iPhone is a force to be reckoned with and Flash’s absense from it is a HUGE problem. Lucky for those of us who compete with Apple, they are completely blowing their long-term developer strategy.

jd/adobe