I wanted to re-post here a piece that was published recently on my personal blog, so that readers here could get a glimpse of the complex world that is "mobile". For many InsideRIA readers, mobile means iPhone or Android, or perhaps more telling it might mean "no Flash". Even though Flash (Lite) has been on mobile devices for over 8 years now, it hasn't yet become a standard technology like it has on the web.

Why? Well, there's many reasons which might for the basis of another post, but overall the is a level of complexity with the mobile ecosystem that doesn't exist for the web. In order to illustrate some of the issues that surround Flash mobile content becoming successful, I decided to outline the business of Flash "wallpapers and screensavers" and what lessons can be learned from this seemingly failed content media type.

Applications are another story all together, but ultimately we're dealing with the same ecosystem so there are some truths that will also be relevant for people interested in developing Flash applications for mobile. That being said, the advances in the standalone application platforms for Flash mobile are quickly advancing to a point where many of these problems could be overcome - with tools such as Adobe Mobile Packager and the coming of AIR and FP10 to mobile.

So, here's my look at the topic "Are Flash Lite Wallpapers Dead?"

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I've been spending a lot of time recently reviewing the past 3-4 years of Flash mobile product development, what things have worked and what hasn't. Some could argue that this review wouldn't take long as the list of things that have worked would be pretty short - point taken.

In particular I have been looking back at the category of "wallpapers and screensavers", and I'd like to share some of my thoughts and see if others would be willing to give some input. The purpose of this discussion is to help the community understand some of the realities of the market, what has been successful, and to help foster some imagination around how to create more compelling content. It's not to downplay the efforts of any company, to raise the profiles of any one company or developer, or to denigrate the content that has been created by anyone - but simply to talk about something that is relevant to the wider Flash mobile community and mobile market, and something that is regularly brought up to me by new developers and content owners looking to "mobilize" their IP.

THE PAST
This category of content has been well documented as a fertile ground for Flash development. The existing mobile content market has been using JPGs and animated GIFs for these screen backgrounds and screensavers since the dawn of time. It stood to reason that with all of Flash Lite's "sexiness" with animation, access to clock, battery, signal, etc, there was going to be a huge opportunity here to create some new ground-breaking content that the consumer market would lap up. And certainly what we saw happening in the early days in Japan seemed to support this thought.

Based on this perceived market activity, many developers outside of Japan took this content type as their primary product output. The term "reactive content" became a more common way of describing this kind of product (I know I used it many presentations), and it seemed to make more and more sense to developers to get into Flash Lite with this kind of product - easy to create, low cost, high impact, feature rich, creative and cross-phone compatible. Over 85% of all the content we aggregated through the Moket Content Network were wallpapers and screensavers.

MORE RECENTLY
So now that the development community was pumping out the content (and let's be honest, not all of it was of the same quality), distribution became the next hurdle to overcome. Some aggregators or catalogue managers took catalogues of content to OEMs like Sony Ericsson and Nokia. Some companies started close relationships with OEMs as well in certain regions, and created content specifically to be preinstalled in certain devices.

Operators slowing started getting interested once the handset support numbers started to climb and make more sense, and so we started to see some larger aggregators license content for distribution. From where I sit, the provider-aggregator-operator channels really ramped up in 2008 and this year has already continued to see growing interest in this content type from aggregator channels.

Portals like Handango seem to have also been used quite extensively by developers themselves (not so much companies) for trying to monetize their wallpapers, screensavers and themes.

CURRENTLY
Well, I'm pretty sure that content development in this space may have slowed in recent times, for independent developers at least. Many are wondering about the financial return first before embarking on content creation, and as such are holding back a little compared to a couple of years ago. There are several companies though that are pushing this content type with some vigor. OEM deals, branded content (either established brands or ones that are being created by the companies) and user user-generated / social-networking applications are now being based on this type of content.

I've also noticed that this kind of content has been well pirated - the existence of rip-offs and poor quality content on warez sites and portals-of-dubious-nature is definitely growing.

SO WHERE'S THE PROBLEM?
Well, I think the problem is that after all of this activity over the past few years now, very few individuals or companies have had success - and by that I mean commercial success ... cash! The success that I have noted seems to be related to more specific deals where there was a single client or brand involved. The mass-market distribution of this content has so far been a long way under expectations.

I think I can sum up some of the main factors that have contributed to this:

• A slow-building handset support base (the numbers of customers that can be reached just haven't stacked up yet for many operators or aggregators)
• The common distribution channels are long, complicated and slow to return royalty payments back down the line to content providers
• Royalties for content providers through these channels are very small
• Most mobile portals don't have Flash previews of Flash content (lack of browser supported devices) - and so the 25 word description and static JPG or animated GIF thumbnails fail to convey the experience that the consumer will get with Flash content
• Portal content management systems have not been set up to work with the SWF file format (though changing this hasn't been a problem really once the decision is made to work with this content)
• The existence of poor-quality, mass-produced catalogues that have lowered the expectations of what can be done with this product type.

There is also some belief the phone personalisation is such an overwhelmingly saturated market that it's just about impossible to get any cut-through with a new product. It's also a content type that is sometimes associated with portals and distribution channels that have been less-than-best-practice in the past, and a lot pf people avoid buying content like this because they've been burnt before by hidden subscription schemes, etc. Plus, it's perhaps moving into a time where it's seen a quite old technology.

WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE?
Ok, so enough doom and gloom, let's be positive and look to the future. What are going to be the positives for this kind of content? In my opinion ...

• More handsets supporting this content (you can never have enough supported handsets!)
• More operators wanting to deliver this content - and more importantly, willing to help differentiate the content on their portals from the boring old stuff
• More well known brands get on board, and through that can educate consumers that this type of product is available to them
• Social media and user-generated applications will again educate the market as to the richness of the experience (but may struggle to monetize?)

YOUR THOUGHTS AND EXPERIENCES
Can Flash Lite wallpapers and screensavers be a viable product for developers? It would be great if some of you who have had experience with this could post some thoughts and some maybe some stories of what you have found to be the case with your content or in your particular region of the world. Again, this is not a forum for bagging companies or individuals - it would be great to hear success stories as well as experiences that have been disappointing.

This is also valuable information for Adobe in terms of guaging where potential problems lie in the market, and perhaps sparking ideas for ways to help the developer community. That being said, I would suggest that perhaps this kind of content in particular is not as high a priority as applications/FP10/AIR/AS3, etc, but nevertheless is part of the Flash Lite ecosystem by way of handset support, so it's something that will continue to be an area of development for a long time to come.

Read more from Dale Rankine.