FlashCast and FlashLite arrive in North America

For Mobile, Macromedia people promised will be a lot of announcements in the next months.
During some general session at MAX 2005 Macromedians said that in North America FlashLite and Flash developers are gonna able to make money and soon a unknown North Amercian operator will distribute content using Flashcast technology.

FlashCast is an end-to-end, client-server solution that is designed to effectively create, deliver, and use rich data services. It's divided into 2 part :

FlashCast Player :
The FlashCast client resides on mobile handsets, utilizing the Flash Lite runtime engine to display full-color images, render high-impact animations, and play MIDI audio—all tied together by ActionScript, the powerful Flash scripting language.

FlashCast server :
The FlashCast service is managed and delivered by a carrier-grade server hosted by the mobile operator. The server manages subscriber accounts, aggregates and delivers channel updates to subscribers, and generates billing transactions for fulfillment. The server sends only differential updates of channels used in the service for each subscriber.

Read the entire MAX Keynotes from Jen Dehaan

Comments

[Bryan Rieger]

Wow! Yet another promise of great things to come from Flash Lite! However, how exactly is this FlashCast Player going to get on n% of phones given Macromedia's current licensing? Sure there are phones coming - but it's not as simple as MM releasing a new player and upgrading users as on the web. People actually need to buy phones that have Flash Player pre-loaded, or are capable of supporting the run-time - and then PAYING for the developer version. Perhaps Flash Cast works differently, but then why is MM even bothering with licensing Flash Lite to manufacturers.

As for Flash Cast Server... one word 'CARRIER'. Definately makes me want to run screaming from this. Sure, CNN, FOX, Disney will get some positioning with the carriers - even some of the major game publishers - but NOT the new/little guys.

Think of the carrier as a retail chain (Electronic Boutique, WalMat, Best Buy, etc). They only have so much shelf space (featured product visibility) and are only interested in carrying products (content) that the industry (big media) has a proven track record selling elsewhere.

As much as I want Flash Lite to succeed - I'm growing more and more skeptical by the week. And with the recent announcement of Flash Lite 2.0 support Flash 7 and ActionScript 2 I can't fathom why anybody would waste their time with v1.1. Also, how long until the 2.0 runtime achieves mass distribution?

Personally, I think Flash Lite is DOA.

[Emory Al-Imam]

During the keynote that Al Ramadan gave at MAX regarding the new partnership between Flash and Brew, he mentioned that the player would be able to be downloaded over the air (OTA) for those people who don't already have the Flash player pre-installed from the manufacturer. This is HUGE because now existing phones on the market can become Flash enabled the first time they attempt to access any piece of Flash content. As future versions of the player are released, phones with older versions of the player can be updated as new versions are pushed out by Macromedia.

As far as smaller-scale content developers being able to deliver Flash content to wireless subscribers, Al also mentioned the support of Flash content in Nokia's global mobile content delivery system known as Preminet. This should help the smaller guys have more of a chance to have their content spread out across more geographical regions than they would have otherwise been able to in the past.

In any case, it'll be exciting what happens moving forward into 2006.