Adobe realigns to step up integrated challenge; Opera supports Android
Last week, the company said its Mobile and Devices Business Unit would be merged with its Experience and Technology group, with the combined operation led by chief technology officer Kevin Lynch. This is designed to accelerate the move towards a fully integrated technology platform and runtime environment for PCs, handsets and portable consumer devices, a goal that will be important to attract applications to the smaller devices, and to support the business models of converged and mobile carriers. With mobile gadgets growing up in terms of memory, storage, graphics and so on, and the hybrid Ultra Mobile PCs and internet tablets joining the fray, it is becoming far more practical to run common software frameworks and apps across the whole range of devices, delivering a consistent user experience from PC to set-top box to phone. Adobe needs to ensure that, in this fluctuating market, it keeps the strong position of Flash in internet content.
Adobe has been criticized for taking its eye off the cross-platform integration ball as it focused on advanced rich internet technologies for its PC heartland, such as Adobe Integrated Runtime - while Microsoft and Nokia grew closer at its expense, and Google started to look real in mobile. Now it appears to be shifting its priorities in order to counter the positive reception that Silverlight has won among PC/mobile developers (especially since its extensive cooperation deal with Nokia), and even in Adobe's key territory, web content designers. By contrast, some developers have cast doubts on the functionality of Flash Lite on advanced mobile devices, a view only reinforced by Apple's refusal to endorse the technology on iPhone, and its very public comments that this is because Flash Lite is, in effect, not up to the job the mediaphone is seeking to do.
These are only rumblings - Microsoft, despite Silverlight, recently licensed Flash Lite and Adobe Reader for Windows Mobile, unable to ignore the massive installed base of the Adobe products, which is licensed in the mobile world by Nokia, Samsung, Verizon Wireless and others, and which has shipped on more than 500m devices to date, according to Adobe. But there are no de facto standards in the mobile web yet, and even those who can make that claim on the PC are not guaranteed to repeat their success on the smartphone - witness Microsoft's long battle to be taken seriously on the handset. The key to real power will lie in gaining a critical position in the integrated runtime market, and Adobe's reorganization is a signal that it intends to devote its resources in the second half of 2008 firmly to that goal.
Over on the user access side of the mobile internet picture, the fight to dominate the browser continues, and Opera has made a smart move by becoming the first third party browser to support Google's Android open handset platform. This highlights Opera's keen awareness that the company that controls access to the applications has far more power and bankability, as Microsoft found on the PC - and Google's recognition that it needs experienced partners to make Android truly impressive as a developer platform, not just as a PR platform.
Android has its own browser, developed using WebKit, but there have been wide reports that this has various weaknesses, such as slow page rendering, and it is clear that the Google platform needs a well proven and credible browser (and other elements), or its newer and fully open technologies will be relying on the power of Google's vision rather than real usability. Opera has the advantage to Android of not being tied to any major vendor (or Google enemy), despite past associations with Nokia; and it has stronger claims than most mobile browsers to be platform neutral, mirroring Android's key claim to be hardware agnostic.
A technical preview release of Opera Mini for Android is already available on the company's developer site, inviting the Android development community to test the fresh build. A beta release will follow later this year. Opera Mini boasts more than 40m users worldwide.
