I heard the big news while getting the low-down on what Nokia will be doing with Flash and more specifically Flash Lite now at release 3. Nokia is committed to cranking out new devices that will support Flash 3 and something new to me, Adobe's CS3 product lineup offers developers are very impressive application development environment that enables creation, testing and deploying applications to mobile devices that support Flash. This really is quite huge, particularly when you now toss in the fact that Nokia owns Navteq and all their assets... wow. Can you imagine the applications that will be developed to run in the Nokia Maps ecosystem. I'm guessing that as Nokia Maps migrates to the OVI space (Nokia is moving their games and maps platforms to what is known as OVI) and the 3+ million members of Forum Nokia ( the world's largest mobile developer community) start thinking more about compelling mapping-based applications, we'll be seeing some pretty amazing stuff! This is just the tip of the iceberg and getting pretty exciting although I guess I'm not totally surprised at what's gone down.

IMHO this is also pretty huge when you consider this, Nokia is essentially an Internet company (and you thought they simply made phones!). With some 900 million Nokia devices out there the company now boasts an even larger developer community (3.4 million Forum Nokia members + the Navteq developer base) the company is the largest enabler of Internet connectivity out there. With a firm commitment to shipping Flash 3 enabled devices and now the assets and geospatial data holdings of Navteq thrown into the mix you can see how significant developing for the mobile device user is going to be. Enter Adobe... I admit I'm not terribly familiar with their portfolio, but after yesterday I'm convinced that the application devlopment tools they are providing are second to none. Think rapid application development, rich Intenet applications, a strong developer community and support system, and now some fantastic resources enabling the migration of your Flash applications to mobile devices... all in all I was blown away at Adobe MAX - I wish I could have stayed a couple more days.

Curious about these developments? If so then I urge you to check out a few of the useful resources that these players offer. These include Forum Nokia; Nokia Creative Pros Community (for everything and anything mobile and Flash!); MOSH (think mobilize and share); The Adobe Developer Connection; Adobe AIR Developer Center (useful for Flex, Flash or HTML/Ajax developers). Stay tuned for more on this. Not interested in mobile geospatial application development yet? Perhaps you should be!

This commentary appeared in the October 3, 2007 edition of the LBSzone Alert Newsletter