JD on EP

Tell you what, I'll buy Opera for more than asking price and trade it for one of those Macromedia Last Edition 2005 black jacket things ;)

... I just revisited the page which started this rumor... I wonder what difference this one story makes in terms of the total ad revenue for that page. (Right now I see ads for a Star Wars movie, two banners, a skyscraper ad, and a small square animation, then a column of Google AdSense links.) I have no idea of the motivation, but I'd like to learn the possible incentives -- can getting Slashdotted be turned into a revenue source?

Eric, the "Last Edition" photo (I'd link to Flickr but their splash pages don't expose navigation/search/structure, and finding content there on dialup takes too long) is actually a thick cotton sweatshirt... the black sweatshirts ran out pretty quickly (San Francisco has its own dress code ;-) but the yellow ones don't photograph as well, so.... ;-)

There were yellow ones? Hehe...

Congrats on aquiring Opera! ;-)

Ah, these rumours are only slightly more silly than the ones that declaring FlashLite is actually shipping (with any decent numbers outside of Japan).

I mean, v1.1 hasn't really taken off (a few OEMs playing with it on a couple of high-end models doesn't count) and now you're getting everybody all excited about v2? Get it on the majority of devices then more developers/businesses might care.

It's a great platform, developers are itching to use it, the content is cost effective to create/deploy and it provides a great user experience. I could have sold FlashLite content countless times over - but the fact that my clients can't actually use it sort of makes for a lousy business case.

Adobe was all about 'pro artists tools', well... I remembering hearing that 'real artists ship'.

Anyway, that's the last of my FlashLite bitching for 2005. Have a great holiday season, and best wishes for the new year.

Sincerely,

Bryan

I saw that one a mile away. What the heck sense would it make for Microsoft to buy Opera? Microsoft already has a decent (well ... matter of opinion) browser. To head off Google? Why? History proves Microsoft is a little more strategic than that. Nothing about the story made much sense. I see more stories like this if nothing else (like was mentioned above) for the ad revenue.

Bryan, you might want to quantify some metrics for your "taking off" perspective, as a way to match it up with the perspectives most other observers have reached.

Cody, I don't care the details of that story, just how well-founded it is, and how much blogospheric attention was focused on such a poorly-evidenced story. Juicy, true, but it should be presented as fiction until sourced, because newbies with poor reading skills would come away confused otherwise.

John, I'd love to quantify some metrics for my 'taking off' perspective - are there any real world numbers released from Adobe? Preferrably those that don't include Japan.

Oh, also if you could point me in the direction of those "perspectives most other observers have reached"? I'm having trouble finding them.

Googling 'FlashLite metrics' results:

http://www.w2forum.com/journal/williamvolk
http://www.keative.com/
http://vvmx.blogspot.com/
http://www.biskero.org/?m=200511

I do follow Bill, Richard, Marco and many of the FlashLite groups blogs - but aside from alot of hope, faith, press-releases and wishful thinking I'm not seeing actual numbers.

I've also seem past reports (2002/2003'ish) where Flash on devices was set to take over the world...

Please make me eat my words. I would so LOVE to be completely wrong in regards to FlashLite.

Found an interesting article with a few numbers:

"...but the margins are more compelling: Macromedia was making between 50 cents and $1 royalty per phone shipped. In 2006 some 700 million Flash-capable phones will ship, and that number is growing at 25% a year. Pre-merger, Macromedia expected mobile to near $100 million in revenues by 2007."

700 million Flash enabled phones is nothing to sneeze at - very exciting. However, I'd love to see a breakdown of which OEMs and over which geographic locations these are going to be deployed? Is this still primarily DoCoMo in Japan, and Samsung in Korea? Also, how many of these Flash-enabled phones are expected to replace existing Flash-enabled devices?

I'm also wondering that as more people purchase higher-end phones if the consumer lifecycle of these devices isn't going to grow. Will people be ready to drop another $600 in 12 months to upgrade again? This could seriously slow the rollout over the coming years.

Also, in North America carriers typically provide devices at reduced rates as loss-leaders for their services - typically multi-year contracts. It's doubtful that the carriers will be willing to take a loss on these higher priced devices just to quickly upgrade their customer to newer device - especially if they already have them locked into a 24-36 month service contract.

On higher-end phones that margin is easily absorbed by the OEM, but as phone/device prices continue to drop it's doubtful that OEMs will agree to the same pricing for long.

"Phones capable of shipping Flash are hitting critical mass. If Adobe isn't aggressive it could be ousted by other technologies like Java, Symbian, or even certain forms of Linux."

I don't necessarily think Java, Symbian or Linux are the technologies to worry about - FlashLite will only serve to compliment them. However, I would throw in plain old XHTML + CSS + Javascript as mobile browsers (NetFront, Opera, WebKit-Nokia, etc.) become more available. It works, is a standard that companies/organizations can actually build (or license, or use an open source option) and deploy their own runtime technology. With Flash, that's not possible - the runtime currently HAS to be licensed.

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Adobe-Faces-Tough-Choices/story.xhtml?story_id=13000EIJ07EI