Microsoft’s new mobile platform may be far from the announced release date of holidays 2010, but there is an update that is already confirmed for the operating system: support for Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR –and it is coming sometime early 2011.
The big news is a confirmation of previous rumors that Adobe will be supported not only by Google, but also by Microsoft. The two companies may be competitors, but since having Flash support is something that Apple’s iPhone OS will never have, it is an important factor that provides the two companies with an advantage that could never be matched (on the same note, both Microsoft and Google promised future support for HTML5, leaving Apple iPhone as the only operating that will not have support for Flash content).
Considering the current lineup of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 features, the new OS already promises to bring a lot to smart phone users. With support for new features such as the MSN player for music and video, the Xbox Live Games service for a new way to play games (which is now a new form of social networking which combines sharing one’s game progression or achievements to contacts), XNA which enables the mobile platform to handle games with full 3D models, and many other new additions, this new OS stands to become one of the most feature packed systems available.
Reports also indicate that Microsoft will be handling WP7 in the same way that the iPhone 4 was delivered –which means that the system will be a closed OS, allowing Microsoft to determine the performance of the system across all devices. This also explains why Microsoft declared a minimum hardware requirement for all phones that would use the OS –to ensure that the user experience is uniform regardless of the device.
Tags: Adobe-Flash, Apple, Apple-iPhone, Apple-iPhone-4, Apple-iPhone-OS, Google, Microsoft, Windows-Phone-7