There was much rejoycing in feburary when Macromedia and Nokia announced that Symbian Series 60 was to become a reference media platform for Macromedia Flash technology. Pundits opined that this was a dream come true.
There does not seem to have been a huge real-world impact, but Flash Lite for Series 60 is nevertheless available for sale, and as noted in our previous article, it is very much a part of our mobile future.
You will remember that the Nokia 6280 and Nokia 6233 were included in that Flash Lite Roadmap. What makes this so unique is that these will undoubtably be Series 40 phones.
Hooray? With this, Series 40 is moving away from a pure proprietary OS; or rather, Flash is moving towards being a serious alternative to J2ME MIDP. That's a good thing. We're surprised that there has been no press release yet, but perhaps they're waiting till those handsets, and Flash Lite for those handsets, are available.
So that is probably why Nokia signed the licence agreement with Macromedia, rather than Symbian Ltd. Also, the inclusion of Nokia 6280 in the 1H 2006 portion rather than 2H 2005 might also suggest that the Nokia 6280 is being delayed from the previously announced Q4 2005, but we prefer the explanation that it may simply mean that Flash Lite will only be available for that device then, not that the phone will only be available then.
