Macromedia, Inc. today announced that Macromedia Flash Lite 1.1, the Flash Player profile for mobile phones, is now available for service providers and handset manufacturers around the world. Flash Lite 1.1 is a significant update to 1.0, first used in the NTT DoCoMo 505i handsets introduced last year. The new version has support for the W3C standard SVG Tiny (SVG-T), network connectivity, improved audio support, and APIs to integrate Flash content with phone functionality. Early adopters and partners including Bellwave, NTT DoCoMo, Sony Ericsson, Symbian, Texas Instruments, and T-Mobile are already enthusiastic about the promise of this technology

"Flash Lite uses industry standards to light up today's mass market mobile phones with even more interactive multimedia functionality," said Juha Christensen, president of mobile and devices, Macromedia. "This rich experience is possible because of the pervasive technology of Flash and the skills of the strong community of Flash developers and designers."

With Flash Lite 1.1, Macromedia delivers on its mission to become the most trusted and first choice in multimedia for mobile devices. The update provides OEMs with a single player for playback of animations using SVG-T as well as Flash, the standard for interactive content. New network connectivity enables Flash content to make dynamic server queries, bringing the power of rich Internet applications to mobile phones. New scripting commands enable developers to create Flash content that can access core handset features such as sending multimedia messages, dialing, checking the network status, and battery level. The update also adds improved audio functionality, with support for MP3, PCM, ADPCM, and SMAF audio formats.

"Macromedia Flash makes developing device content dramatically easier across a wide array of devices," said Darrell Snow, vice president of technology, SBI.Razorfish. "We are always looking for compelling ways to build great experiences for consumers and the adoption of Flash in mobile phones makes it easy for us to do just that."

"As mobile phone capabilities advance with stunning rapidity, a rich and responsive presentation layer has never been more important as a key base of competition," said Cliff Raskind, director of global wireless practice, Strategy Analytics, Inc. "In the quest to support more robust media types on a lightweight connected client while simultaneously condensing development cycles, the ability of one technology to provide core system functionality, integrate with other existing standards, and tap into a wealth of developers is a clear advantage."

Macromedia Flash Lite 1.1 is an updated profile of Flash Player designed specifically for mobile phones. This profile targets mass-market phones that do not have sufficient processing power and memory to support the entire Flash Player 7 feature set available on the desktop. Flash Lite 1.1 will be licensed in different configurations to address the needs of specific market segments such as handset manufacturers and operators. Developers today also have access to the Flash Lite 1.1 content development kit (CDK) covering tips, techniques, and sample code for developing Macromedia Flash content for mobile phones using Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004.

For more information on Flash Lite 1.1, visit www.macromedia.com/go/flashlite.

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