OK. So, “it”, The Adobe Open Screen Project, or AOSP has just been officially announced over at Adobe:

What is it? What does it mean on a high level?

The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics.

The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders, including Adobe, ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to deliver rich Web and video experiences, live and on-demand across a variety of devices.

The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ — that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes.

The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices.

The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.

Specifically, this work will include:

1. Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications

2. Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player

3. Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services

4. Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

What does this mean to Mobile developers?

Good question. Bill Perry has some commentary that he posted and also our friend Alessandro. Also Ryan Stewart from the desktop perspective.

To me, the news is not much of a surprise, but definitely a welcome bit of news for us doing Mobile development with the existing player technology optimized for mobile device (called Flash Lite for those reading that are unfamiliar).

Why? Not because “Flash Lite is dead” per se. Remember, we have 500 million devices and many more on the way with Flash Lite. No, I am excited because with this announcement, because of these thoughts I had:

1. Flash Mobile - a more “Cohesive Vision” - Flash Mobile has always been an afterthought rather than a forethought (or cooperative thought?) for all those outside of developing mobile content (and even internally for Adobe to some degree!).

Hopefully this initiative will add to a common vision among Adobe’s walls, and the project Partners leveraging “Flash across screens”.

With the the Mobile and Devices group now under “Platforms” (i.e Experience and Technology Group); it did not surprise me to hear about this announcement.

2. Better Flash Player Convergence & Less Fragmentation - Think: “Taste Great AND Less Fragmentation” (ideally)

To this day, fragmentation has always remained an issue for us within the Flash Lite world.

Granted, not nearly as prevalent as other mobile technology (actually fragmentation is just a fact of life on multiple levels - not just technology with Mobile!) … but with this move, and with the Mobile and Devices team working under the umbrella of the Platforms group, we now have a more solid vision of a Flash Player across screens (from PCs to Non-PCs like: mobile phones mobile internet tablets (MIDs), and even set top boxes, televisions) … which sounds like a good thing.

Now, does this mean fragmentation is “gone in a year” as players converge? I doubt it. What it may mean, is that it helps Adobe to better concentrate on providing a cohesive set of authoring tools, products, run-time, and cohesive platform that is much more consistent “across target screens”; and the same for partners.

All in all, essentially, I likely suspect, this is the first of many needed steps to take the “Lite” out of “Flash Lite” across constrained devices.

On this thought; it’s amazing to note how quickly mobile hardware on high end devices is catching up to what we want to do with software these days … someone should really come up with Moore’s Law for devices!

Anyways, Cheers … here’s to possible less frag. It’s “bad … very very bad” to quote a Seinfeld character.

3. “Flash on Every Screen” - I can’t recall who at Macromedia first said this quote, but I know Robert Hall used it at a past MAX event back in 2004 …

With Open Screen Project, I think this legacy quote has now just swung open the doors to make this attainable in a much quicker timeframe.

We are talking Flash across non-PC’s, PC’s, and everything that has a screen is game on!

4. Mobile AIR (and potential for Mobile Flex) - Yep. Mobile AIR is now officially on the roadmap! Desktop developers can stop whining. Only a matter of time, now .. so, start planning to target for mobile, like … yesterday!

In the meantime, Flash Lite 3 is a cool stepping stone (remember that devices still have to get to market!) … also, devices running Flash Lite are probably NOT going away anytime soon (unless perhaps if millions of devices have defective screens; all occurring at once … aka device shelf life is a loooooong time … but that of course, is region specific depending on culture, demographics, etc)!

5. No licensing fees means quicker adoption is likely to happen - Just, look at all the partners (as of May 1, 2008) who are onboard:

Adobe
ARM
BBC
Chungwha Telecom
Cisco
Intel
LG Electronics
Marvell
Motorola
MTV Networks
NBC Universal
Nokia
NTT DoCoMo
Qualcomm
Samsung Electronics
Sony Ericsson
Toshiba
Verizon Wireless

Looks like all our usual suspects on the Mobile OEM side are there … with the exception of Apple (or, at least not yet).

I would not hold out for the later … but given that Nokia ships more devices in a month than Apple does all year, it’s Apple that is missing out on all the really cool possibilities!

Oh well, iPhone is kind of irrelevant at this point, as many are copying or innovating off them (P.S. I still love my iPhone).

6. Flash Cast Protocol opened - Adobe is opening up the Flash Cast protocol. Very cool. I need to think more on this one …

7. More Flash on Devices, Quicker - An estimated 1 billion devices running Flash might happen by 2009, instead of 2010. I like faster and better (not to mention cheaper), don’t you?

8. - 10. I don’t have 8 to 10, but I’m sure someone else will! I’m going to bed (yes, even Scott Janousek sleeps. More later!

For more information about the Open Screen Project, send an email to: openscreenproject adobe com. For questions and answers, here’s an FAQ.

P.S.

Anyways, long live “Better User Experiences through Flash”!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 12:45 am and is filed under AIR, ARM, Adobe, Adobe AIR, Adobe Mobile Client, Adobe OSP, Adobe Open Screen Project, Announcements, BBC, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Consumer Electronic Device, Embedded Devices, Flash, Flash 9, Flash Cast, Flash Lite, Flash Lite 3.0, Flash Lite 3.1, Flash Mobile, Flash Mobile Developer, FlashCast, Handsets, Intel, MTV Networks, Marvell, Mobile, Mobile Content Distribution, Mobile Device, Mobile OEM, Mobile Platform, Motorola, NBC Universal, NTT DoCoMo, OSP, Qualcomm, Samsung, Toshiba, Verizon, Verizon Wireless, flashdevices.net, flashlite, nokia, sony ericsson, user experience, www.biskero.org, www.flashdevices.net, www.flashmobileblog.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.