CTIA: Adobe CEO stresses need for standardization

SAN FRANCISCO – Following the first revolution in voice, the second mobile revolution will occur in the Internet if the industry breaks down the walled garden and becomes more open like the fixed Internet. This was the message Shantanu Narayen, president and CEO of Adobe Systems, relayed to CTIA attendees in his keynote address today. He stressed the importance of defragmenting the industry through establishing a standard – clearly preferably Flash, from Adobe’s perspective.

This impending mobile revolution is being driven by network and subscriber growth, innovation on devices and heightened customer expectations, he said. There are over 600 million people now subscribing to 3G worldwide. In emerging markets alone, there will be over 1 billion people who will never use a PC to access the Internet, Narayen added, to illustrate the opportunity in the mobile Web.

“We’re definitely moving from a world with a single experience with the Internet, to a multiscreen experience that has to work,” he told attendees. To illustrate his point, an Adobe colleague demonstrated Finetune, an Internet radio music service that uses Flash to provide a compelling browser, mobile and Nintendo Wii experience. The multiscreen experience would differentiate this service or any like it, Narayen said, with the caveat that today’s reality is there aren’t many other examples of a similar experience.

It is difficult for developers and content creators to create this kind of experience, Narayen told attendees, because not all sites are optimized for display on a mobile device or may not maintain a high-quality experience across different networks. This is a missed opportunity for everyone in the industry.

“The reality is the cost of experimentation is way too high,” Narayen said. “We are not unleashing the creativity of the developer community and helping them make these experiences available on all these devices. Fragmentation is holding the industry back. It creates a chaotic ecosystem.”