This is an interesting video from Beet.tv that talks about the licensing of Adobe’s Flash Lite 3 to Microsoft. Beet.tv interviewed Brian Frank from Adobe how Flash Lite enables viewing of Flash video on mobile phones, and subsequently, opens up doors for games and customized user interfaces. Microsoft’s multimedia platform has offered the promise of enabling these types of applications – which has attracted players like Adobe to their network.
450 million devices are now being shipped with Flash Lite pre- embedded. Brian talks about the potential of networks like Verizon and T-Mobile announcing open networks so more providers, like Microsoft, can offer services directly to consumers for rich web applications.
It will be interesting, when consumers can get all these different types of applications from not only their mobile carrier, but also from outside vendors, and how licensing will come into play. Clearly, a monthly fee cannot be imposed if your carrier isn’t providing the service, so a software license fee would be the way for them to monetize usage.
Just one more thing for enterprises to be aware of when employing a mobile workforce with handsets!