Kuneri bloggy

Interesting statistics from M:Metrics . Although it mostly focuses on mobile games, it’s still possible to extract other interesting details about Flash Lite devices, US / Europe comparison and user demographics.

14 Million - Number of British people who browse, download or use a mobile application

Brits are clearly one of the most active mobile device users in Europe. Although the number looks quite optimistic, but can we use it on any generalization for Europe?

28% - 3G penetration in US and Europe (almost)

Having 3G doesn’t mean that you use it. Although US is very good at flat rate, European users still suffer from high price levels. Might this also mean that European users buy 3G in conscious?

5% - Europeans with flat rate data plan

Where, 15% for US. Might look like US is ahead, but considering the population (Europe is almost 2.5 times more crowded than US), it’s almost the same.

Would it be possible to say US people are much better consumers than Europeans? What I observed is Europeans are not very easy going to purchase something compared to US. Although these figures show US and Europe almost same for 3G and flat rate penetration, I am still not sure if it’s possible to do profitable data dependent business in Europe.

27% - European people with Flash Lite enabled handsets

Where this is 16% for US. This makes a clear distinction of Flash Lite penetration between Europe and US. With these figures Europe looks like a better place to do business on Flash Lite (if you are not in Japan). That’s no surprise considering in Europe Nokia and SE penetration is much better than US. However, is quantity give us a clue about quality? I have the impression that US market makes more money out of Flash Lite content than Europe, due these content is pushed by operators, rather than handset makers. This makes me think that even figures are low for US, US would still be much more convenient for paid content; where Europe would be perfect for advertising supported content services with Flash Lite.

I am little skeptic about the Flash Lite figures; due I am not sure if M:Metrics counted N70 within Flash Lite enabled handsets. Although it’s Flash Lite enabled, player doesn’t come out of the box, which takes N70 and similar popular handsets out of the picture. If N70 is in this 27%, reality would be much less, considering N70 is the still most popular handset in Europe.

Looking at the figures, market seems to improve. This is no surprise. Everyday more Flash Lite devices are shipped by Nokia or Sony Ericsson (or other S60 licensees). My missing piece is a raw model showing Flash Lite can make money outside of Japan.

These are my personal opinions after reading the article. Mark has much more optimistic approach to these figures. I might be missing some other important points, but would be happy to discuss more. I am always up to figure out and expose the real potential in markets.

Ugur.-

Bill posted a really great resource: Flash Lite market percentage (as of January 2008). Those numbers are from U.S and Western Europe and give quite good impression of the target market in those selected regions. Listed numbers include Nokia S60, Nokia Series 40, Sony Ericsson and BREW. It’s especially great to see the numbers of devices separately for each platform as well. I always thought UK had the most S60 devices in Europe, however it’s clear that Italy is the leader.

Mark reported that Dave Bill has updated the Flash Lite enabled handsets spreadsheet.

All published Nokia S60 and Series 40 based, Sony Ericsson and BREW phones are there.

Adobe had published a complete breakdown of the forecasted installed base of Flash Lite devices by region, country and version.

The information in the PDF is extracted from the Strategy Analytics Flash-Enabled Handset Forecast from January 4, 2008 and provides metrics for the forecasted installed base of Flash Lite devices for the years 2007 and for 2008.

Thanks for the Bill Perry for very good info!

Numbers pulled out of Adobe financial analyst meeting and compiled by Vision Mobile. You can read full article here.

Flash Lite
220M: total Flash-Lite-enabled devices shipped by end of 2006 (includes mobile handsets, PDAs and consumer electronics)
194%: year-on-year growth for Flash-Lite-enabled devices shipped in 2005 and 2006.
200+: mobile handset models with Flash Lite embedded
100+: other embedded device models with Flash Lite embedded
16: Number of handset OEMs who have launched handsets supporting Flash Lite (Fujitsu, Hitachi, Kyocera, LG, Mitsubishi, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sanyo, Sendo, Sharp, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba)
2010: year when Adobe projects that Flash-Lite-enabled cumulative devices shipped with have reached the 1 billion mark
51%: target addressable market for Flash Lite in 2006 (approximate)
72%: target addressable market for Flash Lite in 2007 (approximate, Adobe forecast), based largely on technology acquired from Actimagine
$0.20: average Flash Lite per-device royalty fee for 2006 paid by device manufacturers in 4Q06
$0: cost to download Flash Lite player for Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms (although re-distribution is forbidden)

Flash Lite in Japan
40%: proportion of Flash Lite-enabled device shipments in Japan for 2006
25%: penetration of Flash Lite handsets in the installed base
70%: penetration of Flash Lite handsets in the sales base

Flash Lite Commercial Traction
4: mobile operators actively supporting Flash Lite –enabled devices (NTT DoCoMo, KDDI, Softbank, Verizon Wireless)
33: Nokia models shipping with Flash Lite embedded according to Adobe’s website
10-15: approximate number of S40 device models embedding Flash Lite
12: the number of Verizon handsets supporting Flash Lite (from manufacturers LG, Motorola, Samsung)
China Mobile and Airtel: mobile operators who are launching Flash Lite content through their WAP portals.
Lightmaker: the company who designed the idle screen, dialler and menu applications for the Samsung D900 based on Flash Lite.
LG Prada: a designed phone which uses Flash Lite extensively throughout the user interface

Flash Lite Technology
1.5MB: size of Flash player for PCs [updated: this is dependent on product packaging - see here for size of Flash player versions 2 through 9]
400K: size of Flash Lite 2 for mobile devices
300K: the target size for Flash Home product, built on Flash Lite (based on the technology acquired from ActImagine)
ARM 9 with 32/32MB ROM/RAM running at 150MHz: lowest-spec phone embedding Flash Lite, according to Adobe.
BREW extensions: the technology Verizon uses to automatically download and install the Flash Lite player on 12 supporting handsets.

Flash Lite 3
Video: the main ‘feature’ of the next release of Flash Lite 3
May 2007: when Flash Lite 3 is due to be released to handset manufacturers
Christmas 2007: when Flash Lite 3 enabled devices will hit the stores.

Flash Cast
:an on-device portal, client-server product based on Flash Lite.
2005: when Flash Cast was launched
DoCoMo i-channel: the only deployment of Flash Cast in the first two years
10 million: the paying subscribers for DoCoMo’s i-channel (reached in March 2007, 18 months after service launch)
$5: approximate price per user per month for i-channel service
$600 million: annualised NTT DoCoMo i-channel subscription revenues
3: The number of mobile operators who announced Flash Cast deployments in 2007 - Chungwa Telecom (Taiwan), Verizon Wireless (US) and Telenor (Sweden)

Flash Home
:active idle screen product based on Flash Lite
Feb 2007: when Flash Home was announced
2H07: when Flash Home code will be released to manufacturers
1H08: when supporting devices are expected to appear in the market
300KB: expected Flash Home code footprint (compared to 400K for Flash Lite 2.0).

Latest press release from Adobe states that number of Flash enabled mobile devices shipping worldwide has tripled since January 2006 and reached over 200 million. That’s a good progress and obviously Nokia’s Symbian S60 3rd edition penetration has a big role in there.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that the number of Flash® enabled devices shipping worldwide has tripled since January 2006, to reach more than 200 million. Adobe’s mobile Flash technology includes Adobe® Flash Liteâ„¢, a Flash Player profile specifically developed for mobile devices, and Adobe FlashCast®, Adobe’s flexible client-server solution that delivers rich, intuitive mobile data experiences. Both technologies have seen explosive adoption worldwide over the last twelve months.