Macromedia on Monday announced a deal to make its Flash
Player software available to licensees of Opera Software’s embedded Web
browsers.
Opera, an open-source browser doing battle with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and AOL’s
Netscape, said it
would make the Flash Player software available to consumer electronics
manufacturers and software platform providers on a range of devices.
The deal allows licensees of Opera’s Embedded Browser to support
Macromedia’s Flash Player with their devices and platforms and would
eventually put multimedia applications, content and services on a range of
web-enabled devices like wireless PDAs and set-top boxes.
The licensing deal puts the Flash Player Opera embedded editions for Linux
and QNX operating systems, the companies said.
While financial terms were not released, it appears to be an extension of
previous deal for Opera to license the Flash Player technology in the
Windows, Linux and Macintosh versions of the Opera browser.
Companies using Opera’s technology within their products now gets to use the
new Macromedia Flash MX development environment to deploy content on
Web-enabled devices.
Opera Software makes money from developing Web browsers for the desktops and
devices. The company has partnered with the likes of IBM ,
AMD, Symbian, Canal+ Technologies, Ericsson, Sharp and Lineo. Opera is
available on Windows, Mac, Linux/Solaris, Symbian OS, and QNX.