RIM, Adobe Team For BlackBerry Development

Adobe and Research In Motion said Monday the companies would be entering an alliance that is aimed at helping developers make more compelling content for BlackBerry smartphones.

The companies had previously announced a deal to bring a full version of Flash to the BlackBerry platform as part of the Open Screen Project, but a goal of the expanded partnership is to make it easier for developers to use existing Adobe tools to create content for RIM's smartphones. Adobe said future versions of its Creative Suite will have optimized capabilities for developers to build graphics, images, and videos for the BlackBerry platform. The optimized content can come from tools like Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects, and these graphics can then be imported into various BlackBerry application development tools.

During a demonstration Monday at the BlackBerry Developer Conference, Adobe and RIM said the overall goal is to reduce the amount of friction that designers and developers encounter when creating a mobile application. The companies demonstrated how content creators can make BlackBerry-optimized graphics, pull those up on emulators, transfer this content to live devices for testing, and adjust those graphics for the various BlackBerry devices with a few clicks.

While much of the attention and focus of this alliance will center on consumer-facing applications, RIM said it has just as many implications for developers targeting the enterprise market.

"These types of graphical requirements are just as important on the business side as they are on the consumer side," said RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie.

The partnership with Adobe may give RIM an advantage over Apple's iPhone, which does not support Flash and appears committed to technologies like HTML5 for Flash-like services. Adobe is also planning to bring a full version of Flash to Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Palm's webOS.

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