Flash Lite 2: Fueling the Mobile Ecosystem

It's out the February issue of The Edge with a interesting article on Flash Lite by Bill Perry where he explains the benefits behind the use of Flash Lite 2 for developers.
I'd love what Bill said could be true right now :

Now let's say you create a Flash Lite game (or cartoon, application, etc) and a content aggregator distributes your content to its partners (usually operators). You might only receive $100 up front for your content, but as part of your contract you are guaranteed a percentage of every download — say 10 cents per download. One year later your piece of content has been downloaded 125,000 times, so you've made $12,500 in royalties in addition to the $100 you were paid up front — that's $12,600 for one piece of content. These numbers are hypothetical, but as you can see there's a lot of potential for Flash Lite developers to make money.

But I think that we must be patiet and wait for this great scenario :)

Here is the TOC of this number of The Edge :

• Flash Lite: Fueling the Mobile Ecosystem
• Just Released: Flex 2.0 Beta 1
• Project Profile: The Vine @ E! Online Uses the Flash Platform
• Calling All Photographers: Adobe Lightroom Beta Is Here
• Adobe Unveils Studio for Post-Production Video Pros
• On the Spot with Adobe Developer Relations

Comments

[fandango]

Good vision, already please!
Fandango

[VL]

After reading what Bill had to say, I myself wish it were true. Problem with the mobile industry is the operators or middleman(service provider) at the moment avoid paying any upfront fee. What they will propose is revenue share/royalty. Branded and license contents definitely have an advantage in collecting anytype of upfront license fee. As the market gets more competitive, how much can you really make? Hence the "hypothetical",Bill has stated.

Going back to what I said earlier the business model developers have to expect would be revenue share. In my opinion revenue share will allow content developers to focus on creating interesting content/applications. On the business side of things everyone's in it for the $$$. The better the content the more the downloads the more $$$.

Well that's my personal insight, and current run-ins with operators and SPs.

-VL

[Thomas Landspurg]

A few comments:

* the description is not specific to FlashLite,and could happens already today with Ringtones,Logos and Wallpaper, and eventually games.

Why this does not happens? Because it's very hard to got some visibility / space on an operator/aggregator deck. Especally if it's very easy to create contents, you will have a huge number of applications. And licenses got such space much more easily, but in case of licensee, the developer usually just got a fixed fee for his works...

So the described scenario is unlikely to happens in my views...

[Dale Rankine]

What do you mean - this scenario that Bill outlined is already happening in Asian markets with Flash Lite content - though mostly without any kind of upfront payment. And what's the issue with that really? Upfront payment will only cover a very small portion of your time investment anyway, so it's not like it's going to make a huge difference. Where it's at is with the royalty payments. The only factor with this model is making sure that the content you create will be compelling enough for people to want to buy it, and that the application/game/content will get some decent exposure to the market through which ever aggregator who do the deal with. Granted, this isn't always easy to do, but it's possible. Developers who are starting to look at Flash Lite need to understand the mobile landscape, accept it as it is and get on with creating content. Simple as that.

[VL]

My comments were based on the Flash in the Asian market, and apologize if had caused any misconception on Bill's model. I was pointing out the revenue stream for the developer just being too ideal for the current market situation.

So thanks Dale for pointing that out. I'm currently based on in in Korea but have had to chance to see the start of mobile flash in China over the past year and official operator service of recent.

Although both Korea and China aren't exactly using Flashlite, it is still a form of mobile flash.

Korea has done really well, but again developers and content providers struggle trying to create "rich compelling contents" that attracts end-users to purchase. But having a large CP(content provider) base and a pool of contents, there's bond to be "platinum hits" just like any business.

-VL