Why Adobe develops Flex
Microsoft develops tools for developers to drive the sales of the operating system and Office. The more people develop Windows apps, the higher demand is for Windows itself.
Google develops a search engine to drive revenue from ad placements. The more people use the search engine, the higher click-through rate on the injected ads.
Apple develops iTunes to ultimately drive the sales of iPods.
Now, why does Adobe develop Flex? Let me know what you think and I will describe my theory in a follow-up post.
posted by Mark Piller at
6:21 AM
Subscribe to this blog
7 Comments:
Flash 8 and previous versions, are for web pages, Flex is for apps.
The AS3 and new Technologies requires standard language element, even in layout section, thats why Flex (based on Eclipse) is unique.
Another approach is that web is nowadays more application focused than some years ago. Flex follows this trend, and intents to nurture it.
7:36 AM
My opinion is they develop Flex for two reasons: (1) because there's a clear gap in the market for an Enterprise-level tool for delivering intranet applications on the web - where Flash-whizziness is secondary to delivery of data in business-effective ways. (2) because they can sell consultancy to these Enterprise-level organisations to aid in bringing such applications to their desktops!
I suspect your theory is a little more sinister though, so I'm looking forward to it ;-)
Jamie.
7:36 AM
Speaking of Flex as part of ex-Macromedia products
Flash is a good choice of developing fairly good and animation-live projects but was more than limited when trying to be pushed for bigger, more enterprise-alike apps. Not to mention the time to develop such a project in Flash and say in .NET/ASP.NET. Additionally Actionscript was highly limited as more designers were dealing with Flash than developers. Flex got ideas from Laszlo (at that time a good choice), and so it began :-) I think MM was interested in general to attract more developers and to show the world Flash platform is stable enough for critical and big apps.
Bottom line though – more Flash supporters, hence bigger sales (Flash and Flex) and higher revenues.
Speaking of Flex as it is part of Adobe products
Probably reasons are countless and they can be filtered in dozens of groups like evolution of their design products, good level of competition against ever-changing dev/design market and requirements, new market opportunities (the line between a fairly good designer and developer is almost invisible lately and this new breed of developer+designer needs new choices and better solutions :-) and so on.
Flex offers a good base to step on a pure dev market like native app development (Apollo), and has a warm welcome of developers from different backgrounds. It allows Adobe products to evolve and offer better results, and to offer a kick against MS ideas.
The only weakness (my opinion) is that Flex is tight with Actionscript. It would be much better solution to have a port for using Java and even better - C#. This could offer a unique solution similar to .NET but on steroids because of all these jazzy thingies like easy animations, effects, Flash swf integration, etc.
In general, Flex is a natural step to offer better decisions for future apps but in its current form it’s not any different than so many offers from other companies. It will continue to be bright and shine probably, but with a limitation to Actionscript only, I don’t think it will be the next hot thing in any future (near or far).
And as time flies, MS is gaining speed and with their well-known style to copy ideas and finish them to precision - Expression, WPF and WPF/E will become hotter and sweeter and we (final users) can gain from all this competition.
But following your line – Flex is a must for Adobe to continue raising its revenues and not loosing markets :-)
7:51 AM
Er.. Isn't it obvious? So they can sell products called Flex Builder, Data Services, Charts.
As everyone knows FB is built on eclipse and most of the heavy lifting has been done. All Adobe have to do is write a few eclipse views(or whatever they are called) and hey-presto, they have a product they can sell at an outrageous price.
The Charts and DS are not rocket science and will make adobe a tidy profit when sold at ~300$ USD a shot.
6:03 PM
its funny you ask this question. if anyone is interested it was asked and answered many times on the flashcoders list when flex came out.
basically, people started using/misusing flash ide for application development. it was clear to macromedia that application development in flash was a pain in the butt for flash developers and confusing for developers coming from other languages. it was clear they needed another product to address this need, thus flex was born. it continues to be developed because it is a platform for delivering rich feature filled applications over the web and soon the desktop. it is easier to develop in and will get easier and being the creators of it they can add exactly what they need (and the community of developers and designers that use their products).
@dimitar - i dont think actionscript is a limitation. as1 and as 2 but not as3. i think it is an improvement and can compete just fine with c# and java. take a closer look at the features of the language. it has some very nice features, including e4x and others and it will continue to be improved.
3:10 AM
I think Adobe is in the business of increasing demand for the Flash player. Then licensing the player for mobile devices on a per unit basis.
6:56 PM
So that MS, Adobe or Google with buy them.
11:45 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home