BenQ Mobile licenses Flash Lite Technology

Category: Software, BenQ Mobile

Adobe and BenQ Mobile today announced a licensing agreement for Macromedia® Flash Lite™ technology. With its new BenQ-Siemens brand, BenQ Mobile is moving aggressively into the mobile handset marketplace in Asia, Europe and North Latin America. Flash Lite is the Flash® profile developed specifically for mobile phones and will power the rich user experience across BenQ-Siemens devices, including customized user interfaces and enhanced content and browsing that will help define the personality of an emerging global player in the handset market.

 

"BenQ-Siemens is a unique collaboration, combining European mobile handset engineering expertise with Asia's outstanding heritage in delivering must-have consumer electronics products," said Al Ramadan, senior vice president of Mobile and Device Solutions at Adobe. "It is great news that this powerful new brand in the handheld market is paying as much attention to the screen experience that powers loyalty and customer engagement, as they are to the designs and form factors that grab consumer attention in the first place."

 

"By integrating Flash technology into our user interfaces, we're helping ensure consumers have easy access to the incredible capabilities of our mobile handsets," said Clemens Joos, CEO at BenQ Mobile. "For too long the handset market has been obsessed by industrial design while forgetting that consumers interact with their phone through the screen and keypad. BenQ -Mobile recognizes that world-class design integrates hardware and software into a single memorable user experience."

 

BenQ Mobile expects to begin integrating Flash Lite into its mobile handset offerings in the fourth quarter of 2006. BenQ-Siemens recently introduced EF81, S68 and S88 handsets. AllThe EF81 and S68 feature slim design and a metallic finish, with the EF81 indicating where the company sees the future: miniaturization of high speed Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) technology in an ultra thin magnesium clamshell design. BenQ-Siemens has committed that at least a third of its products launched in 2006 will be 3G and that there will be a significant focus on multimedia.

 

Flash technology enables OEMs, consumer electronics device manufacturers and operators to provide rich, customizable user interfaces, while delivering more consistent consumer experiences across devices, operating systems, processors and screen sizes. By leveraging the Flash ecosystem — which includes the Flash authoring tool, Flash Lite player runtime and an established community of more than one million designers and developers — Flash Lite can reduce deployment costs and deliver content and interfaces three to five times faster than competing solutions. Today more than 65 million Flash technology-enabled mobile phones and consumer electronics devices, including televisions, media players, set-top boxes, digital billboards, cameras, educational toys, car navigation systems and more, have shipped worldwide.

 

For more information on Flash for mobile and consumer products, visit www.macromedia.com/mobile