| Bsquare to license Flash Lite for Windows devices |
Jan. 03, 2008
Embedded software specialist Bsquare has taken over an Adobe Flash technology consulting and distribution business from NEC Corporation of America. As a result of the transaction, Bsquare will license Adobe's Flash Lite software to OEMs building mobile and embedded Windows devices worldwide, it says.
Bsquare says its acquisition includes distribution rights for Adobe Flash Lite ports to Broadcom, Freescale, IBM, Intel, Marvell, NEC, NXP, RMI, and Texas Instruments processors. In addition to providing porting, performance optimization, testing and verification services, Bsquare will feature Flash Lite on its DevKit hardware development platforms for Windows CE.
 Adobe's Flash Lite 3 will be licensed by Bsquare for mobile and embedded Windows devices Version 3 of Flash Lite, released in October, allows mobile devices to playback Adobe's .FLV file format, used by websites such as YouTube and Myspace. It supports video from Adobe Flash Media Server software via Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) streaming, and also from websites that transmit video via progressive download, according to Adobe.
Flash Lite has been marketed to mobile device manufacturers, wireless operators, and content providers not only as a means of video playback, but also for creating games and entire user interfaces. Features cited by Adobe when it announced Flash Lite 3 include:- Flash content support -- Flash Lite 3 is now compatible with .SWF files authored for Flash Player 8
- Performance enhancements -- Improved rendering and scripting speeds result in a 25-30 percent performance increase of Flash Lite applications
- Man Machine Interface (MMI) extensions -- These allow the same source assets to be used across multiple handset designs, and allow device UIs (user interfaces) to be customized for a specific demographic, location, or personality
- Improved authoring environment -- Developers can now design, preview, and test content using Flash CS3 Professional and a new component called Adobe Device Central 3
- Automated testing system (ATS) -- This can cut testing times by up to 85 percent, accelerating time to market, and includes an online certification portal and an interface that allows testing teams to communicate and collaborate
- Dynamic XML data -- Flash Lite supports loading and parsing of external XML data in Flash content using the same XML handling methods as Flash Player
Brian Crowley, president and CEO of Bsquare, said, "Our engineering services team will performance-optimize Adobe Flash Lite for OEMs building mobile phones, set-top boxes, digital signs and other customer-facing devices. [They] ... will benefit from Bsquare's experience and expertise as a distributor of Microsoft Windows Embedded licenses."
Flash Lite runs on multiple platforms, including Windows Mobile, Symbian S60 v2/v3, Qualcomm BREW 2.x/3.x, and Linux. Bsquare's activities, however, have historically been limited to Windows XP Embedded and Windows CE.
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