Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player optimized for mobile phones and other non-phone, portable electronic devices like Chumby and iRiver. Flash Lite 1.1 supports Flash 4 ActionScript. Flash Lite 2.0, based on Flash Player 7, supports Flash 7's more powerful ActionScript 2.0. Both versions also support the W3C Standard SVG Tiny (a mobile profile of W3C's Scalable Vector Graphics recommendation). The advantage over SVG is the ability to add audio and interactive elements without the use of other technologies such as JavaScript.

Flash Lite is considered a client-side, or user interface (UI) layer, development technology. In this realm Flash Lite competes with other technologies like Qualcomm's uiOne markup language and Sun's JavaFX Script. Because of the more powerful ActionScript advances it is more able to integrate with and even compete with device-layer technologies like J2ME and BREW. Flash Lite should not be thought of a mobile operating system like Symbian, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X for mobile.

As with Flash, Flash Lite benefits from the ability to read and redraw external XML content.

History

In 2005 Adobe completed its acquisition of Macromedia. At that time, Flash Lite had been available to mobile users in Japan and Europe for some time prior to its availability in the United States. NTT DoCoMo and AU KDDI were the first carriers to adopt Flash Lite in June 2005.

As a promotion for Flash Lite in February of 2005, Macromedia conducted its first Mobile Flash Content Contest. From the over 150 applications submitted, nine winners were selected in areas of Best Business and Productivity Application, Most Innovative use of Flash Lite, Best Animation, Best Business Application, Best Educational Content, Best Game, Best Interactive Content, Best Productivity Application, and Best Overall Use of Flash Lite. Contest Winners

In May 2006, the iriver U10 (later rebranded as the iriver clix) was released, which supported Flash Lite content in a landscape layout. The U10 was the first dedicated MP3 device to support Flash Lite.

In 2005, almost 100% of Flash Lite enabled devices were found in Japan. Since early 2007 over 70% of Flash Lite devices are shipped outside of Japan ().

In October of 2006, Verizon Wireless announced support for Flash Lite (), making it the first operator in the USA to adopt the technology. Flash Lite was initially available on four handset models (Motorola RAZR V3c, Motorola V3m, Samsung SCH-a950 and LG VX9800) as a BREW extension. By mid 2007 the number of supporting handsets had risen to 13, representing 16M Verizon subscribers with access to the Flash Lite technology. It should be noted that this allows users to download Flash Lite applications from Verizon's Get it Now service, it does not allow user's to view Flash objects frm their web browser.

In February 2007, Adobe announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona that the next release of Flash Lite (version 3) would support video, including streaming video (). It was further announced that Flash lite would support all video formats currently supported by the Adobe Flash Player.

Flash Lite vs J2ME

Note: Because Flash Lite is a mobile development platform that can either compete with J2ME or run on top of J2ME in a Flash Lite Player, these comparisons below should be weighed against the pros and cons of other development platforms in addition to J2ME. Other platforms include BREW, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. It is also worth noting that in 2006 QUALCOMM announced a partnership with Adobe to bring the Flash Lite player to the BREW runtime.

Flash Lite content may be viewed on handsets installed with the Flash Lite player in the same way J2ME content may be viewed on phones with a J2ME interpreter. Both of these technologies may be present on the same handset and do not compete directly.

Applications, games and other content may be developed in either technology. Flash Lite has several advantages and several disadvantages when compared to J2ME.

Advantages:

Access to key phone functions, such as bluetooth, camera, microphone, GPS, contacts has caught up with similar functionality available with J2ME (and BREW) development.

Rapid development due to the Adobe Flash IDE makes iterative prototyping and user testing comparatively easy.

Better support for the Write once, run anywhere (WORA) methodology that does not depend on specific APIs being available. This results in little or no porting, which is a major cost in J2ME development

Graphics are vector based (bitmap support is also included) which allows for scaling, rotation and other transformations without loss of graphic quality

Ability to pack more animation and graphics into the same file size (again, due to the vector graphics)

Ability to convert web-based (desktop) Flash content to mobile and vice versa, with minimal effort

Flash development skills -- understanding of the IDE and of the scripting language -- readily ports from the desktop IDE to the mobile development environment

Flash enjoys a robust development community

Disadvantages:

Still a minority of phones offer support Flash Lite. However this is changing rapidly in North America and Europe with carriers like Verizon and manufacturers like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and LG having announced Flash Lite devices in 2006 and 2007. Its limited availability means a limited audience as compared to J2ME, Symbian, or BREW[Citation Needed]

Relatively poor graphical performance (due to higher processing required for vector graphics)

Poor handling of sound ([Citation Needed] or example required)

Adobe has recently made its Flash Lite 3 beta available for S60 3rd Edition, although it is intended to be for developers only and is not a consumer-focused browser-integrated player.

Future

During the Adobe 2007 Financial Analyst Meeting (), several key developments and forecasts of Flash Lite were presented.

In December 2006, 220M Flash Lite devices had been shipped. This is predicted to approach 1.2B in 2010, mostly due to the acquisition of some key vector rendering technology by Actimagine which will reduce the Flash Lite player memory footprint.

Articles

Developing Flash Lite for BREW applications for Verizon Wireless