I read over Anand’s blog that Flash Lite 4 bits are now available from Calsoft.

For those that don’t know, Calsoft is one of a handful of partners who work with Adobe to get the Flash (Lite) runtimes working across various chipsets for devices which enable the platforms we sometimes work on.

In any event, I know a lot of people out there want Flash Lite to “go away” with the coming of Flash 10.1. You may ask “Why Flash Lite 4?” …

Well, 1.) OEMs still need it and 2.) The reality is that if you want to make money with Flash on mobile and devices these days you need all the options you can get.

Flash Lite is still a viable option despite what the self-proclaimed pundits might say. OEMs are still going to use it to solve their business needs, and developers should still use it when they need to (10.1 is still yet to be released, and will do so in low numbers to begin with).

I have yet to hear of a economy for 10.1 content, besides existing businesses with Flash websites. Standalone app building won’t happen for 10.1 until AIR ships on mobile and devices … CS5 iPhone packager is another viable option, if you want to join the fray of app builders in that arena.

However, Flash Lite has some established ecosystems which developers can make a go of monetizing their apps and content with (e.g. Nokia OVI, many others I listed in Advanced Flash on Devices).

With a huge array of devices that need to run under constrained factors (e.g. CPU, memory, etc), as many devices people have worldwide, Flash Lite is still warranted (even if it is viewed as “yucky” by some stringent Flash developers).

On the bright side, Flash Lite 4 supports ActionScript 3 (at least it has that going for it for the naysayers out there!), can do H.264 video, and is optimized for constrained memory and CPU found on many mobile and device platforms out there. Anand points out that Flash Lite 4 standalone player is customizable, while Flash 10.x inside the browser is not.

Apparently, Flash 10.x requires a base requirement of a “600 MHz ARM11 class chip”, Flash Lite needs much less to operate.

For those that aren’t aware, Flash Lite 4 is both standalone and plug-in where as Flash 10.x is browser only (at the moment). Later this year, AIR 2.0 for Mobile and Devices will make standalone 10.1 content possible.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 1:41 am and is filed under Flash Lite. 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.