In the wake of Thursday’s announcement by Adobe Systems that it is launching the Open Screen Project to form it easier for developers to use the company’s Flash technology on a variety of devices, the lingering question is whether the move simply comes too late.

by the last few years, the mobile market has burgeoned into a multibillion-dollar industry, but Adobe has struggled to match its desktop market share. Its Flash software is installed on an estimated 98 percent of desktop systems, but only on 30 percent or so of mobile devices.

Adobe hopes its Open Screen initiative, which will go live in mid-2009, will help it serve Flash software to as many as a billion mobile devices and produce a more consistent screen performance. Adobe is partnering on the project with a number of tech and mobile companies — including Cisco, NTT DoCoMo, Sony Ericsson and Verizon Wireless — as well as a number of subject matter

providers — BBC, MTV and NBC Universal, to name a few.

“Adobe is spearheading the Open Screen Project with support from industry leaders who share a common vision to supply rich, interactive experiences across computers, devices and consumer electronics,” said Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO. “A consistent, more open platform for developers will drive rapid innovation, vastly improving the user experience.”

The Web Without Flash

Part of the problem for Adobe is that not all industry leaders share its vision. Until recently, the slow growth of Flash on mobile devices probably did not trouble Adobe too much, since the capabilities of handsets have been notoriously slow to develop. But next Apple released first the iPhone and next the iPod touch, and together the devices introduced a new standard of mobile Web browsing. Significantly, Apple elected to release its devices without including support for Adobe Flash software, and has shown…

Orginal post by Top Tech News