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Despite the hostility of Apple, Adobe is determined to be a major player in the mobile and multiscreen world. And it used its MAX developer event to show exactly how it plans to do so.

At the MAX conference, Adobe made its usual promises of spanning multiple platforms painlessly, and extending this message to new norms such as app stores and the cloud. Mobility and the "post-PC" device world were to the fore at the firm's MAX conference in Los Angeles this week, as Adobe – like Microsoft – brought mobile services out of their ghetto and placed them everywhere.

AIR 2.5 expands

To support these increasingly familiar trends, Adobe hopes to put its Flash and AIR technologies at the heart of mobile multiscreen. It may have found its way onto the iPhone and iPad by default, since the threat of antitrust probes forced Apple to open up to Flash, but its growth is far more tied into the platforms with which it works on a friendly basis, notably Android but also BlackBerry. These two OSs, as well as Apple iOS, were the first platforms for the newly upgraded AIR 2.5 runtime, and RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis took the stage to show the first public demonstration of PlayBook, RIM's tablet, in action, running AIR apps.

Adobe says AIR enables developers to use Flash and Adobe Flex tools to create and distribute standalone applications across many platforms. As with Flash, it sees the big benefit of AIR to be easier programming across a multitude of devices. "We built the web as a really compelling, great way to reach the broadest possible audience. Apps are an extension of that experience," said Anup Murarka, Adobe's director of product marketing for Flash.

New features in release 2.5 include support for accelerometer, camera, video, microphone, multitouch, geolocation and gestures. Vendors are signing up to preload AIR 2.5 into upcoming devices such as Acer PCs, HTC and Motorola smartphones, and most interestingly, the Samsung SmartTV. Google TV and webOS also now support Flash and AIR (a previous release of AIR for Android 2.2 had to be downloaded).

InMarket and ad formats

In an extension of its bid to be the common system papering over the cracks between different operating systems, Adobe has turned its attention to app stores. It has introduced InMarket, a centralised distribution portal which spans app stores on Windows, Mac, Linux and most mobile platforms (including, of course, Apple IOS, after the firm's climbdown on barring Flash from its phones).

InMarket enables developers to market their Flash-based software across different devices via third-party stores run by many Adobe retail partners, from PC makers to Intel to (potentially) operators. According to Adobe, InMarket operates seamlessly in the device background, and users can download from any given store. Developers receive 70 per cent of the revenue, as they do in direct stores, while Adobe and its retail partners split the rest and carry out the credit card processing, marketing and hosting. Individual agreements with partner stores may vary.

Developers register and create a publisher profile at InMarket and can then build and test programs using the InMarket software developers' kit (SDK). Adobe and its allies promise to validate all submissions within 10 days.

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