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Microsoft Accepts Flash For Windows Mobile

Posted by kdawson on from the embrace-is-the-first-step dept.

Ian Lamont writes "Despite Microsoft's aim to take on Adobe Flash with Silverlight, the company has decided to support Flash on Windows Mobile devices. Microsoft has also licensed the Adobe Reader LE software, so owners of Windows Mobile devices will be able to view PDFs. The two companies are working together on integration and OEM distribution, but Microsoft is still mum on when consumers will be able to use Flash or Silverlight on their Windows Mobile phones. The article points out that Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and LG already support Flash, but only Nokia has announced Silverlight support, and only on some models starting later this year. The other major handset maker — Apple — doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future."

20 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. What do you expect? by l2718 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not implementing the industry standard while putting in their own competing product would have serious anti-trust implications.

    1. Re:What do you expect? by twitchingbug · · Score: 2, Insightful

      in the mobile space? Are you saying that Microsoft has a monopoly there?

      Here's a a smartphone chart by OS that I found...

      If you believe it Windows Mobile has 25% market share, which, in my mind, means that they don't have a monopoly and can implement almost anything they want to, because there are ... wait for it... CHOICES in the mobile OS arena.

  2. Free implementations exist by l2718 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Flash and Silverlight are fully documented, and there exists free implemenetations: Gnash and Moonlight, respectively.

    1. Re:Free implementations exist by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "Free Software" suggests there are no patent traps to be concerned about, and that's certainly not true with anything involving Mono.

    2. Re:Free implementations exist by CRCulver · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The issue is that software patents stand against the ideals of Free Software. Stallman has long stood against software patents, and boycotted GIF and Amazon for years. Therefore, the implementation of Silverlight cannot be said to conform to the spirit of the Free Software movement. It's a free implementation, but it's not a Free one.

    3. Re:Free implementations exist by Adaptux · · Score: 2, Informative
      Flash and Silverlight are fully documented, and there exists free implemenetations: Gnash and Moonlight, respectively.

      I tried Gnash recently, and the video that I tried to view simply didn't play.

      In addition, Adobe does not allow the documentation for Flash to be used for making or improving a free software viewer.

      Regarding Silverlight: yes, the docs appear to be not restricted in such a way, however that is not good enough. Who knows whether the documentation is complete? In addition, without formal standardization, nothing stops Microsoft from extending the format whenever they like and forcing free software implementations to play catch-up-if-you-can.

      Furthermore, there is always the potential issue with patents, which means that it is never clear that something which looks like free software really is free software as long as whoever has developed the underlying design hasn't made a a clear patent non-assertion promise. This is particularly problematic with regard to Novell and the Mono project in general, and especially so with regard to Moonlight: It appears that Novell is depending on this non-free patent license from Microsoft in a way from which I can only conclude that Moonlight is not free software.

    4. Re:Free implementations exist by orclevegam · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think the point here is more that in the case of things like Mono, they blatantly violate a known patent, and exist mostly by the permission of the patent holder. The risk of implementing anything on Mono (or similar patent encumbered software) is that at any time the patent holder can step in and throw a major wrench in your operations. With a truly "Free" implementation there is no known patent infringement, and even though there's always the chance it violates a patent held by someone somewhere the odds of that are significantly lower as it's essentially a given that the encumbered implementations do in fact violate patent.

      --
      Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
    5. Re:Free implementations exist by orclevegam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Are you sure? I always thought that Mono was a completely independent implementation. At least that was what I was told at uni. Independently implemented != safe from patents. It just means it's safe from copyright and certain provisions of the DMCA. Until the idiocy of software patents is abolished doing any sort of development work on absolutely anything is the legal equivalent of running through a minefield.
      --
      Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
    6. Re:Free implementations exist by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think there are lots of reasons to criticize Stallman, but one thing he has not been is insignificant.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    7. Re:Free implementations exist by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 2, Informative

      Are any of those implementations, free or not, really secure?
      Or am I going to have to patch the software on my mobile too?

      Security has a number of dimensions. A heterogenous environment is more secure because a disease vector can spread less rapidly; and in a population with a dominant phenotype, disease vectors which attack that phenotype will be more successful and spread much more rapidly than ones which attack the recessive phenotype. Which is part of why there are fewer successful malware attacks on Linux than on Windows, on Firefox than on IE, but more on Apache than IIS. It's not (only) because Linux and Firefox are open; it also because they're subdominant. So if in future there's a serious malware attack on Flash, it's quite likely that Gnash will be immune, even if Gnash isn't, in and of itself, more secure than Flash.

      That is, until it becomes dominant.

      --
      I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
  3. I for one by imamac · · Score: 3, Funny

    miss all those flash ads on my iPhone.

  4. I've had flash and PDF for years now by Timothy+Chu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hmmm...don't know why this is news:

    Flash: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer_pocketpc/downloads/player.html

    PDF: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrppcdload.html

    I've had these installed since 2005.

    Note that some flash videos like youtube videos, won't run in this implementation of Flash (so perhaps the article is referring to a version of Flash that *will* run streaming video). The widgets that web site designers tend to embed in their bloated websites do load for me with Windows Mobile 2003.

    The "news" part of this may be that it's MS supporting this, not Adobe as it currently is, which may mean a better implementation.

  5. Re:Mobile silverlight? by vux984 · · Score: 2

    but it ain't the best performing application in embedded systems.

    It ain't the best performing application on a full blown desktop.

    I was hoping mobile devices would stay away from flash long enough to force web developers to provide non-flash required systems - so that all of us could choose to have flash on or off. Most sites shouldn't absolutely require flash just to navigate around.

  6. The World's Most Unusable Browser by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now burdened with Flash!

    Gee. My phone ALREADY locks up, when browsing ("I TRIED to answer your call!), What'll YouTube do to it?

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  7. Re:Wooo, flash lite. See those adverts on your mob by toleraen · · Score: 2

    I take it you haven't used Adobe Reader LE on a mobile device. It is a fast, reliable, lightweight PDF reader, especially when you compare it to the competition (I'm looking at you, Clearvue).

    Agreed on Flash though, doesn't work for crap.

  8. iPhone don't need no steenken Flash by Wylfing · · Score: 5, Funny

    The other major handset maker -- Apple -- doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future.

    That's because everyone will switch to Quicktime! Oh yes! It's catching on like wildfire.

    --
    Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
    1. Re:iPhone don't need no steenken Flash by Nitemare14 · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's catching on like wildfire. If it's catching on like wildfire, then someone needs to put it out, and fast.
  9. Re:Flash sucks. by VoltCurve · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah. I hate choices too. I'm glad the corporate masters decide for me what apps I should run on my device, and which are a waste of time (I mean, really, ENTERTAINMENT? fuck that).

  10. Re:Flash sucks. by Kenji+DRE · · Score: 2

    I have an iPhone. I'm *GLAD* it doesnt support flash. Flash is used:

    1. For entertainment/cartoons videos. Not terribly important to me.
    2. To overcomplicate access to various types of media (mainly so its harder to directly download the media, which makes it
    impossible to save it an play it offline)
    3. By incompetent "webmasterz" to make websites hard to use and look like shit, preventing any possibility of changing the font
    sizes or colors (becuase they are always incredibly tiny and fuzzy, and in horridly hard to read garish colors), or to copy/paste the text, and to make all the forms and controls as slow and as bloated as possible.

    Apple fans are quick to point out how they love it that their iphones don't support flash, because flash are mainly used for useless ads by stupid web developers.., etc.
    How about apple website? They've used plenty to flash-based ads on their pages.
    --
    His exploit "just works". Apple fanbois everywhere implode in a self-collapsing vortex of cognitive dissonance. by jjack
  11. Re:Replace Flash/Silverlight by an open standard by DECS · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes it would be so much better to replace HTML with something from the makers of the Win32 API.

    Silverlight's attempts to kill Flash will work out about as well as MSN's original effort to replace AOL. By the time it can catch up, there won't be any contest left. The real solution is to improve the HTML spec to the point where we don't need proprietary add-ons. WHATWG and HTML 5 will go a long way in doing that.

    H.264 doesn't need a Flash playing wrapper.

    iPhone 2.0 SDK: How Signing Certificates Work