Nokia Licenses Flash

According to Scoble via Russell Beattie Nokia just licensed Flash. This is much bigger than WMA support on portable music players. This is bigger than a deal between Motorola and Apple for a portable iTunes player. And it kicks the two format leaders squarely in the teeth. The cell phone is the portable on-demand media consumption device to replace all iPods. Flash is already cross-platform and capable of making secure media delivery possible on any platform. Flash is the most widely available media format on the Web with hundreds of millions of installed players. The missing link has been support on portable devices. Weak support exists on a bizarre cross-section of the Pocket PC industry, which extends to Windows Mobile phones too, but there aren't enough users with GSM access via Windows Mobile to make a significant industry out of delivering streaming content to portable devices. Nokia bringing Flash on board is a sign of the immediate future for streaming multimedia always-on anywhere. Flash can deliver no-buffer streaming over dial-up speed connections, especially for audio. We did it with the radio show to remote destinations all over the world, so I know it can be done over any of the existing cellular data streams. In the short run, this probably means more games for cell phone users, because plenty of apps are ready for almost immediate porting. In the long run, Flash becomes the content format of choice for portable devices because creating Flash content will work everywhere. Macromedia was smart enough to realize their format needs to work on every desktop; consider this the sign that they are aiming squarely for every pocket too. Posted by Jake

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Nokia Licenses Flash

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