> Yes, the player is fantastic. But how will adobe make money out of it > if... their business model ( with regards to the flash platform ) now > revolves around development tools and data/media infrastructure, not > the player itself which, licensed as you say it is, didn't cost me or > anyone I know a single penny.
They make mad money off the player in mobile devices. > So they are, in a sense, putting things at risk by maximizing > portability and lending their technology for others to leverage > against their mainstream products. > Where's the risk? Adobe doesn't make bank from Flex Builder. They make nothing form the Flex framework itself. I don't know the numbers for how much they make from Flash Authoring, but the point is that these tools are all a means to an end. That end is getting licensable versions of the player (ie mobile) onto as many handsets as possible and selling licenses of their enterprise-level LiveCycle stuff. That's where the money is. Being able to port c++ code to AS3 has no negative impact whatsoever. All it means is that more and more code will run on the Flash Player, which generates more revenue from embedded devices and likely sells more copies of LiveCycle.
