Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Macromedia: Advancing With Mobile Innovation

"Last week's purchase of Mobile Innovation by Flash maker Macromedia signals a significant shift in the way mobile user interfaces will develop in the future. We talk to Matt Millar, co-founder of Mobile Innovation and new Practice Director of Macromedia's Mobile and Devices practice in EMEA, about how the change affects Mobile Innovations products and services.
We first featured Macromedia's plans to push Flash from a content presentation tool to mobile UI enabler back in July 2004.

Since then Macromedia have announced a number of licensing agreement, including Nokia. The drive looks as though it will be moving up a gear with the purchase of UI specialist Mobile Innovation. Mobile Innovation have been behind a number of the UIs seen on today's Symbian OS devices.

Richard: What is the motivation for Macromedia's purchase of Mobile Innovation?

Matt: Mobile Innovation has used Macromedia Flash for PC prototyping of user interfaces for as long as its been in existence. In the last 18 months Macromedia has made Flash Lite available and moved into the mobile space. As a company we questioned why we were prototyping with one tool and then implementing the design in C++. If we could go straight from the prototype to running, it would made a lot of sense.

As Macromedia started to work in the mobile space we started working more closely. We offered Macromedia our handset experience and helped inform their development. Over time it became clear that the companies shared goals and the deal progressed from there." More>>

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