Understanding developments at the sharp end of mobile travel technology

Just as execs at travel brands are understanding what a mobile strategy should be, developers of the actual products are digesting what could be a landmark moment in mobile technology.

In a somewhat surprising announcement one the first day of its MAX 2011 event, Adobe Systems announced that it was acquiring Nitobi Systems, the creator of PhoneGap.

In a somewhat surprising announcement one the first day of its MAX 2011 event, Adobe Systems announced that it was acquiring Nitobi Systems, the creator of PhoneGap.

I'm a big supporter of PhoneGap and have used it for clients at the day job, so I'm happy to see the deal happen (not as happy as the Nitobi guys are, obviously) as it will lead to more enhancements to an already strong platform.

This is an important development that mobile devs needs to pay attention to. There are three things that I think mobile developers should take away from the announcement:

1. Adobe is looking forward

With the purchase of Nitobi (and also Typekit), Adobe signals that it is unequivocally moving to up its development tools and "Write Once, Deploy Anywhere" strategy around Open Web standards of HTML5, JavaScript and CSS, and is moving on from the legacy of Flash.

This is great news for all developers for two reasons:

• From a skills development perspective it simplifies things.
• All of Adobe’s energies will be to ensure that its industry-leading tools will stay there. Certainly this is part of a plan to re-engage and re-energize the developer community which prefers an open, rather than proprietary approach.

2. It’s a great fit

This was a surprising deal to me only because I didn’t think Adobe was shopping for one of the mobile cross-platform framework companies. But it makes a ton of sense.

Now developers can create apps in HTML5 using Adobe CS5 and then deploy that code into native binaries via the PhoneGap framework with the click of a button. Dead easy (oversimplification, but you get the idea).

I expect that the integration between CS5 and PhoneGap will improve over time to make it a seamless experience.

And I expect that this is the end of Adobe’s Packager for iPhone to translate CS5/Flash files into iOS compatible code. Good. I hope they put the extra development dollars from that project right into PhoneGap.

Further Adobe also released the third public preview of Adobe Edge a HTML5 motion and interaction design tool that enables Flash-like animation to websites and mobile apps via the Open Web Holy Trinity (HTML5/JS/CSS3, not to be confused with onion/celery/carrot for you cooking fans).

This has a chance to really get developers excited about Adobe again…not that Adobe hasn’t had great products all along – they have – but with all the posturing over Flash in its spat with Apple, it hasn't generated the excitement with the developer community that it had in previous years.

That should change now.

3. Adobe continues PhoneGap’s Open Source culture

Initially I wondered whether Adobe would continue to keep PhoneGap open source and include the developer community in enhancing the platform, or if it might simply make the code available as Google does with Android.

But Adobe was pretty emphatic in its support of the Open Source community as the code was donated to the Apache Software Foundation.

The Open Source nature of PhoneGap is part of what made it so popular with developers.

Now if I was cynical or suspicious, I’d think that the donation to ASF was the final effort of the Nitobi management to ensure its legacy is maintained.

Perhaps the Nitobi founders made it a condition of the deal? You only have to modestly parse the statements in the press release to say that Adobe endorsed the decision after the transaction, not encouraged it. Who knows and who cares. What’s important is that it’s done.

Wrapping up

This deal has many question marks still surrounding it, not least in how developers and travel companies already embracing mobile will adapt (or not).

So, are you using PhoneGap already? Does this announcement make you more or less interested in it as an option for mobile development?

Oh, and one more thing. Do you think Samsung, Motorola and RIM will stop advertising Flash compatibility as a reason not to buy an iPad now? God, I hope so.