Strong Mobile Adoption of Flash and AiR

For the first time last quarter the shipment of smartphones has outstripped PCs. This is particularly true in the world of education where students and pupils have adopted mobile technologies to stay connected and to communicate amongst themselves. Some of the mobile device statistics are staggering:

• 84 million smartphones running Android or iOS – growing to 200m by the end of 2011
• 20 million msartphone devices shipped with or upgraded to Adobe Flash Player 10.1 – growing to 132m during 2011

Add to this the explosion in social networking – http://blogs.adobe.com/ukchannelnews/2011/02/04/social-networking-and-twitter/ - and it is easy to conclude that smartphones and smart applications will have a significant role to play in the education of our young people sooner than we might previously have thought.

To get a better idea of how these technologies will develop in 2011, take a look at the announcement from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona:

http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20110213005219/en

Adobe is also showcasing the latest release of Flash Player – Flash Player 10.2 – along with additional performance advancements at the conference. The new release includes support for innovative new features including Stage Video, which delivers much improved video performance through optimizing hardware acceleration on mobile devices, desktops and TVs. Stage Video decreases processor and memory usage while enabling higher frame rates and improved video quality. Test results show up to 80 percent CPU savings when playing back video in 1080p on Windows® and Mac OS. Stage Video support for mobile devices will be available on Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” and BlackBerry Tablet OS. Existing H.264 video content on the Web will benefit from Stage Video on mobile platforms without any changes to the content.

Adobe AIR

A key element of the Adobe Flash Platform, AIR enables developers to leverage existing code to create and deliver standalone applications across devices and platforms. Adobe AIR supports smartphones and tablets based on Android™, iOS, BlackBerry Tablet OS, and desktops including Windows, Macintosh and Linux® operating systems. In addition, Samsung is the first television manufacturer to ship Adobe AIR in its line of Samsung SmartTV devices. With Adobe AIR, developers are able to use familiar tools including Adobe Flash Professional CS5, Adobe Flash Builder™ and Flex to build rich standalone multiscreen applications. Thousands are already available on Android Market, Apple’s App Store, Adobe InMarket and Intel AppUp^SM center today.

Adobe AIR enables rich application experiences through a series of features, including support for accelerometer, camera, video, microphone, multi-touch and gestures. Support for geolocation allows developers to create location-based applications and services. AIR is also able to display native browser controls within the application allowing for the integration of HTML and .SWF content. With SQLite support developers can easily store and cache databases inside an AIR application.