This week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Adobe provided an update on how its Flash and AIR technologies have performed over the course of 2010, specifically in terms of penetration results. Thanks in no small part to the rise of Android devices, Flash adoption has topped Adobe’s earlier forecasts. At the Adobe MAX Developer Conference earlier last year, Adobe had forecasted 9% of mobile phones would support Flash in 2010, but as of year-end, the actual number was 12%.
There are now 35+ certified mobile devices that support Flash, says Adobe, and 20 million mobile phones running the plugin.
During Adobe MAX, the number of Flash Player downloads were around 2 to 2.5 million, but by year-end, that number had reached 6 million. Video in particular is driving demand for the plugin, as people browsing the Web on their mobile phones “want to have access to the sort of content they’re used to being able to access,” says Adobe’s Anup Murarka, Director of Product Marketing, a none too subtle jab at Apple, whose mobile devices notably do not support Flash.
On the desktop and mobile platforms combined, there has been over 100% year-over-year growth in video streamed over Flash, or 120 petabytes per month on both platforms combined. The number for mobile Flash video alone is not yet available, we’re told.
As far as Adobe AIR, there are now over 1,500 AIR apps in the Android Market, according to data collected by third-party service AppBrain, which Adobe is using to provide these figures. By the end of 2010, AIR was a supported technology on 84 million smartphones worldwide.
2011 Forecast
After wrapping up last year’s trends, Murarka looked ahead to 2011. He says that Adobe is expecting “more dramatic growth” this year. By the end of 2011, over 132 million phones will support Flash, representing over 600% growth. Not only is Android contributing to this rise, but Murarka says that Adobe is expecting to see more Flash-capable devices come online during the course of the year from RIM, HP (webOS) and Microsoft (and now Nokia’s) Windows Phone 7. Also, that answers a question about whether HP would follow more in Apple’s footsteps when it comes to its newly launched webOS phones and tablet, or if it would conform to what the rest of the industry seems to be doing – that being supporting Flash.
This year, around one-third (roughly 36%) of smartphones will support Flash and more than 50 tablets will either ship with Flash built in or will be able to download the plugin.
Despite this growth, Adobe seems to know that Flash adoption won’t continue indefinitely – it still needs a way to provide value that complements or go beyond what Web technologies can provide. In 2011, Murarka says Adobe is “going back to its roots” to focus on what made Flash successful over the years. This includes areas such as games, copy protection for video content and the ability to build complex and rich applications.
Adobe will focus on 3D gaming and will also add new codecs this year, including webM. With Flash 10.2, which Adobe is now showcasing, a new feature called Stage Video will bring hardware acceleration to Flash on mobile devices, desktops and TVs, while also reducing processor and memory usage. Adobe says it delivers over 80% CPU savings for 1080p video on Windows and Mac computers. It will also be supported on tablet operating systems like Google Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” and BlackBerry’s tablet OS. However, there’s no word on what the CPU savings are on those devices.
