Adobe to Acquire Mobile Innovation

[Mike Temporale]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/20/macromedia_mobile_innnovation/

"Macromedia is to acquire Mobile Innovation, a privately-held design and integration house in the UK with around 50 staff, for an undisclosed sum. What makes this deal noteworthy is that Mobile Innovation designs phones as well as user interfaces. It's an integrator, and Tier One handset manufacturers devolve a lot of design decisions to MI. ...it's well known amongst industry insiders that Mobile Innovation was responsible for the Nokia 9300 Communicator design and other high-end Symbian smartphones, Nokia's Series 90 user interface, and Hildon, the GUI for Nokia's Linux tablet. Both of the founders, CEO Jonathan Sulenski and CTO Matt Millar came from Symbian with Millar's roots reaching back to Psion and the Series 5 PDA."

This is very interesting news. It's no big surprise that there is demand for Macromedia Flash on other platforms, including mobile devices. However, I don't really see why they would require a company known for designing user interfaces on mobile devices. It's not like go and run Flash content as it's all embedded in other applications and web sites. Do any of you have some thoughts on what Adobe might be up to?

[Mike Temporale]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/20/macromedia_mobile_innnovation/

"Macromedia is to acquire Mobile Innovation, a privately-held design and integration house in the UK with around 50 staff, for an undisclosed sum. What makes this deal noteworthy is that Mobile Innovation designs phones as well as user interfaces. It's an integrator, and Tier One handset manufacturers devolve a lot of design decisions to MI. ...it's well known amongst industry insiders that Mobile Innovation was responsible for the Nokia 9300 Communicator design and other high-end Symbian smartphones, Nokia's Series 90 user interface, and Hildon, the GUI for Nokia's Linux tablet. Both of the founders, CEO Jonathan Sulenski and CTO Matt Millar came from Symbian with Millar's roots reaching back to Psion and the Series 5 PDA."

This is very interesting news. It's no big surprise that there is demand for Macromedia Flash on other platforms, including mobile devices. However, I don't really see why they would require a company known for designing user interfaces on mobile devices. It's not like go and run Flash content as it's all embedded in other applications and web sites. Do any of you have some thoughts on what Adobe might be up to?

[Stinger]

I would guess that Macromedia are looking to develop a whole UI based on Flash and sell it to manufacturers/operators.

Since Flash development is very quick, they could rapidly customise and extend the UI to the operator's wishes. That would give it a clear advantage over Windows Mobile, Series 60 or Palm OS.