New Flash opportunities for Adobe

A number of TV sets and set-top boxes have been shipping with broadband connections; this has now opened up a number of new Flash opportunities for Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE). The company has said that its Flash platform for running rich Internet applications as well as playing online video will now start to ship to vendors’ digital TVs and set-top boxes, sometime in the second part of 2009.

Information Week reports that Flash will now become part of the system-on-a-chip products from Broadcom (NSDQ: BRCM), Intel (NSDQ: INTC), Mediatek, NXP and Sigma Designs. This new form of integration will increase Adobe’s reach with Flash far beyond cell phones and PCs.

An estimated 98 percent of PCs have Flash installed and almost 80 percent of online video is watched through Flash. Strategy Analytics estimate that the number of cell phones shipping with Flash Lite is expected to reach 1 billion this year, and more than 2.5 billion by the end of 2010.