Macromedia today announced significant milestones in the adoption of Macromedia Flash throughout the mobile content ecosystem. During the past year, shipments of mobile devices running Flash nearly tripled from 12 to 35 million units. Three of the six leading mobile device manufacturers, up from one last year, now license Flash to deliver great mobile experiences to their global customers. During the same period, the number of operators supporting Flash content and services surged from 1 to 12.

Supporting this adoption spike is the Macromedia Flash Platform (announced today, see separate release), a complete system that includes the Macromedia Flash Lite client runtime and time-tested development tools. The fast-growing mobile market segment offers an unprecedented opportunity for the Flash developer community — more than one million strong today — to make great digital experiences possible.

"We are excited about embedding Macromedia Flash technology into the Nokia platform to empower developers and operators around the world to create and deliver rich, interactive content and applications faster and more cost-effectively than ever before," said Lee Epting, vice president, Forum Nokia. "We're confident that integrating Flash technology into our platform will help drive the adoption of smartphones as well as boost data usage and operator ARPU."

Leading operators KDDI and NTT DoCoMo, as well as nine others, are now supporting Flash content and services. All but one were signed within the past year. Examples of enriched business benefits for these operators include offering enhanced browsing and online services, custom user interfaces, and unified experiences across branded devices and data services.

More than 60% of the 4,400 official i-mode sites are based on Flash Lite