In an article that was published today, Gartner is forecasting that worldwide mobile phone sales are on pace to grow 11% in 2008.  Although this was the main focus of the article I found that the additional information they discussed was more interesting, specifically five key trends in mobile devices through 2009.

• Established Vendors Consolidate and New Players Join the Fray
• Device Vendors Build Out Ecosystems
• Devices Makers Will Focus on Removing Complexity for the User 
• Mobile Devices Increasingly Become Lifestyle Statements 
• High-End Device Platforms Become “Field-Refreshable"

Some of these trends are starting to take shape now and others will grow later this year and into next year.  It goes to show how quickly the mobile space is evolving and the importance of consumer needs being thought about by the handset manufacturers, operators and other ecosystem players. 

If you're a mobile content creator think about 'removing complexity' and 'lifestyle statements' when designing your experiences.  The iPhone does a good job of removing complexity by it's use of click efficiency, or tap efficiency and you should consider minimizing the number of 'clicks' a consumer has to
do in order to interact with your content. 

Sony Ericsson and Nokia devices allow for things like wallpapers, themes and screensavers that consumers can select to customize the UI of their phone.  Simple things like having a wallpaper change it's appearance based on the time of day or other device state info is something that Flash Lite developers do today and these same features can be incorporated into a Flash Lite application or game.

Thought I'd share this link to an article I came across yesterday on AJAX World Magazine where the author Guy Aharonovsky talks about the future of RIA's on cell phones and small devices.  In it he covers the strengths and growth opportunities for several technologies: Adobe Flash Lite, Microsoft Silverlight, Apple iPhone, Google Android, Sun JavaFX Mobile and Trolltech QT.

Wireless week posted this article a few weeks ago about Flash Lite and thought it would be of interest to those of you who are following what we're doing in the non-PC space with our technologies.  Anup Muraka from our mobile and devices team is interviewed in the article and talks about Flash Lite, Open Screen Project and other topics.

Those of you who are interested in supporting localized text in your Flash Lite applications now have a new resource to help provide guidance and best practices.  Today we've published a Flash Lite article about "Creating Bi-directional Text in Flash Lite" (including sample files) and it's definitely one topic that we've heard requests from developers about.

The author Samir Dash has done a great job of sharing his knowledge including how to separate the data and presentation layers for text and how a string of text can vary in length depending on the language being used.  This is important if you're thinking about developing an application that can support more than one language.

I hope that the broader community starts to create more localized Flash Lite content now given Samir's article - if you create something please share it with the community by sending me an email with a short description and screen shots. We love to see what you guys are creating!

We have a great new article covering dynamic layouts for Flash Lite applications up on our mobile and devices developer center- check it out!

David Brown from Agencynet wrote the article and in it he covers the technical side of things as we walks through some of his AS code he wrote for the Bacardi Mobile application that we've been demoing since February. Sample files are included and the code will work in Device Central and on any device that supports Flash Lite 2.0 or newer in standalone mode.

Today we've published several new resources to help developers understand the Flash Lite ecosystem and ways in which they can participate:

Understanding the Mobile Ecosystem
Written by Strategy Analytics, this 30 page PDF primer helps explains the basics of the mobile content marketplace and the options for delivering content to consumers phones. This white paper is not specific to Flash Lite but instead focuses on the broader mobile ecosystem and covers all mobile technologies. If you're a web developer interested in exploring the mobile ecosystem, this is a great resource.

How to protect Flash Lite content with OMA DRM 1.0
In this article, Alessandro Pace does an excellent job of explaining how to apply DRM to your Flash Lite SWF files to prevent them from being shared after downloaded by a consumer. It's technically oriented and includes some sample code to help explain things.

Also if you haven't yet already downloaded the Flash Lite 3 Standalone Developer Edition from Adobe Labs you can still do so. This standalone player will allow you to test your own or other peoples Flash Lite 3 SWF files.

There's a new Flash Lite 3 article "Creating a video e-card application for mobile devices" available on the Adobe mobile and devices developer center.

The article outlines the process of building a basic Flash Lite 3 application that allows users to send Flash Video (FLV) clips with custom messages to other mobile device users. The recipients will be able to view the e-card greetings using a mobile client on their handsets. Sample files and a detailed walk through of the steps to build the application are provided.

Thanks to Samir for spending his time to share his ideas and knowledge of Flash Lite with the broader developer community.

There's a new technical article on the Adobe mobile and devices developer center that Michael Tuminello wrote in which he describes how to build a Flash Lite fretboard quiz app. This is a Flash Lite 2.1 application and if you're new to Flash Lite development this is a good article to get started with.

You can test your application using Device Central, or if you have a Nokia S60 3rd edition or later device you can download the Flash Lite 3 developer edition and test on your device.

The article includes the sample files so you can download and follow along. Let Michael know what you think of his article and if you create any variations of the fret application make sure you share them with the community. I can imagine a lot of creative variations of this application.

There's a brief article in the Australian PC Authority magazine about using Bridge & Device Central CS3 for creating Flash Lite content.

There's an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Adobe and Flash on wireless on devices that you might want to take a look at which provides some insight into where things are heading.

There's still time to register for this month's online Flash Lite webinar for developers: Best Practices for Performance and Memory for Flash Lite. It's an hour long webinar and will take place from 9-10am PST this Wednesday 27 June.

One of our technical engineers for Flash Lite (Prashant Panigrahi) will be discussing and showing examples of how you can improve your Flash Lite applications and content to better utilize the available memory per handset. Here are some things that he'll cover:

• How memory management and garbage collection work in Flash Lite 2.x
• How you can tune your Flash Lite 2.x application/content to make the most use of the limited memory and CPU cycles on your mobile device.
• Key points to consider for better performance while developing your Flash Lite 2.x applications/content for mobile devices.

This will be a technical presentation but I encourage anyone who's interested in developing Flash Lite applications to attend this webinar. At the end of his presentation there will be some time for a Q&A session. If you're unable to attend you don't have to worry- we will be recording it and making it available online for viewing within the next 2 weeks.

If you have ideas for future Flash Lite online webinars please leave a comment.

On the Adobe Mobile and Devices Developer Center we've posted a new white paper (PDF) for Nokia developers interested in learning how to control the Softkey positions for handsets that allow for different screen orientations like the Nokia E70. You can use these with Flash Lite 1.1 and 2.0 content. I'll be posting some sample FLA files next week that demonstrate how to use these new FSCommand2() commands.

There's a brand new Flash Lite article about optimizing your content for OTA delivery up on the Adobe Mobile and Devices Developer Center. Aniway, one of the top Flash Lite development shops in the world shares some very valuable information for those of you who are either new or have some familiarity with various ways to optimize your content - from code to graphics to tweening. This article is applicable for both Flash Lite 1.1 and Flash Lite 2.x content and I highly recommend you even print it out to refer to while you're developing your content.

We've just posted a new technical white paper for optimizing content for Flash Lite 2.0. It's in PDF format that you can use or print out for reference. Even though there's a lot of good information in here for Flash Lite 2.0 content you can still use some of these same best practices for Flash Lite 1.1.

This is the first of several white papers that we'll be publishing for the Flash Lite community and we're interested in additional topics that you would like us to cover. Leave comments below and we'll consider them for future ideas. Also let us know what you think of this whitepaper.

"Persistent Data: Saving User Preferences and Game Scores" is a new Flash Lite 2 article available on the Adobe Mobile and Devices developer center. Written by Mariam Dholkawala (lead Flash programmer for Indiagames) this article contains sample code and technical information about how to implement shared objects for your own purposes.

Following up on my online discussion last Saturday (8 July) I've now compiled and made available the first FAQ for developers creating Flash Lite applications and/or content for BREW devices. You can download it here - it's a zip file that contains a PDF version of the FAQ.

If you have any additional questions that you would like me to answer please post them in the Adobe Flash Lite: BREW discussion forum or you can leave comments here. Around the first week of August I'll create a version 2 of the FAQ.

If you're interested in Flash Lite 2 development, there is a new article (Mobile Charting with Flash Lite 2) up on the Adobe Mobile and Devices developer center written by Peter Baird and Clive Whitear. Included in the article are some new Flash Lite 2 charting components which they explain in detail how to use and customize for your needs.

Today we posted a new Flash Lite article written by Jae Young Chae of Korea about best practices for converting Flash content to Flash Lite 1.1 which is available in English and Korean. In the article Jae discusses how to create an application using AS 2.0 and then how to repurpose it for Flash Lite 1.1.

Back in January of this year when I was traveling through Seoul I had the chance to meet and talk with several Flash Lite developers. One of them was Jae and in my opinion he's one of the best Flash Lite developers in the world. His real world knowledge with using the Flash authoring tool and creating Flash UI and applications for LG handsets is impressive and I'm glad he's able to share some of his experience with developers around the world.

Here's some good news to start your weekend, we've updated our Nokia developer center pages so information is easier to find as well as providing detailed information on the handsets that will ship with Flash Lite.

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/devices/nokia.html: this is the main page for developers interested in learning more about creating Flash Lite content for all supported Nokia handsets.

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/devices/nokia_s40.html: this page is for all Flash Lite information that's specific to supported Series 40 devices.

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/devices/nokia_s60.html: this page is for all Flash Lite information that's specific to supported S60 devices.

We'll be updating all of these pages with new articles and tips and tricks over the next few weeks to help developers who are creating specific types of Flash Lite content for these devices (standalone content, wallpapers, screensavers, etc...). Let me know what you think of these changes in addition to what types of information (articles, samples) you're interested in seeing.

If you don't already subscribe to the monthly Adobe Edge newsletter, you should. Each month there are several articles including case studies about how companies are succeeding by using Adobe products.

In the Feb issue I talk about "Flash Lite: Fueling the Mobile Ecosystem" and what it means for developers. There's also a case study about Refresh Mobile and how they are enabling consumers to enjoy updated compelling content from print media owners on their handsets using Flash Lite.