| Windows Mobile broadens Web format support |
Mar. 17, 2008
 Windows Mobile will gain native support for PDF (portable document format), SWF (Shockwave Flash), and FLV (Flash video), according to Adobe, which says Microsoft has licensed its Flash Lite and Adobe Reader LE (lightweight edition) for the phone stack. No timeframe for integration was announced, however.
Adobe said Windows Mobile will include its Flash Lite 3.x browser plug-in. This will let the Internet Explorer browser work with the web's most popular animation, video, and document-sharing technologies for the first time, the company says.
Flash Lite 3 brings .FLV and .SWF to devices
Adobe claims Flash Lite, already found on more than half a billion mobile devices, "closely replicates the desktop experience delivered by Adobe Flash Player." That does not mean 100 percent compatibility, however: Flash Lite reportedly cannot yet display Web sites created with the newest version of Flash, Flash 9.
Adobe Flash Lite 3 architecture
The agreement is surprising in that Microsoft recently announced a Windows Mobile version of Silverlight, its own "cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in." Silverlight has been widely seen as a competitor to Flash, with similar support for animation and video. Like Flash, it is available for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh desktops, as well as Nokia's Symbian S60 and Series 40 smartphones. For more details, see our earlier coverage, here, and here.
Today's announcement gives Windows Mobile a boost compared with Apple's iPhone, which outsold all Windows Mobile devices combined in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2007, according to Canalys. Speaking at a March stockholder meeting, Apple CEO Steve said Flash compatibility will not be coming to the iPhone. The desktop Flash "performs too slow to be useful," and Flash Lite "is not capable of being used with the Web," he reportedly said.
One Windows Mobile web browser, Skyfire, is already said to be compatible with both Flash Lite and desktop Flash. The product overcomes phones' limitations by performing many page-rendering tasks on Skyfire's own server infrastructure, according to CEO Nitin Bhandari.
Meanwhile, Adobe Reader LE is tailored for the memory constraints on mobile devices, yet offers claimed compatibility with all PDF documents. The only exception is the desktop edition's forms filing feature, according to Adobe. Adobe Reader LE has previously been available to Windows Mobile users via a few phone vendors, such as Japan's Softbank.
Availability
Neither Adobe nor Microsoft provided a timetable for Flash Lite and Adobe Reader LE's inclusion in Windows Mobile. Silverlight for Windows Mobile will be available in the second quarter, according to Microsoft.
As for Skyfire, it is still in an invitation-only beta. More information is available from the company's website, here.
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