By Brandon Bailey
In a new battle for market share, tech titans Microsoft, Adobe Systems and Sun Microsystems are promoting rival platforms to build software applications for an Internet that's evolved from text-and-photos Web sites into a rich array of fluid, interactive and increasingly mobile services.And while each has its own strategy, analysts say all three companies hope to build revenue from a host of products, once they persuade developers to embrace their platforms and tools for building "rich Internet applications" — programs that incorporate animated graphics, video or interactive features.
"Everyone is kind of secretly hoping" to emerge as the dominant platform, said Jonathan Eunice, a principal at the IT advisory firm Illuminata. "There's just a general feeling for many industry leaders that, 'Wow, we've got to figure out a way to be the one that's the linchpin of all these interactions in the world.' "
Adobe has the early lead, with a family of widely used developer tools that include Flash, Flex and AIR. But Microsoft began pushing hard last year to promote its Silverlight technology, persuading major corporations like Netflix and NBC Universal to use it for delivering online video of movies and sports.
Sun's JavaFX
And in recent weeks, Sun has entered the fray with its JavaFX, a development platform for music, video and other applications that builds on Sun's popular Java programming language.
Other development tools, both proprietary and open-source, already exist. And unlike earlier wars over competing operating systems or Web browsers, analysts say it's unlikely that one company will dominate this field — at least not in the near future. But the market is huge.
The most popular Web sites today offer more than just online documents and links, noted Al Hilwa, a software development analyst for the IDC research firm. Whether they are buying clothes, catching up with friends or watching college football, he added, people who go online today "expect more graphics, animation, integrated video and other sophisticated interfaces that cater to their needs."
The exploding popularity of smart-phones and other mobile devices has increased the technical challenges of providing those features, since mobile devices use a variety of operating systems and hardware. But it's also fueled demand for tools that developers can use to offer a sophisticated experience that is consistent, or at least similar, on all screens and devices.
Adobe's Flash
Adobe has an early beachhead in the battle: Its Flash software is already found on most PCs, which use it to play video and animated graphics. Flash powers YouTube and is used by Major League Baseball for online video. A version is also found on many cell phones, although Adobe has not been able to win adoption by Apple on the popular iPhone.
Many graphic designers and Web developers also use other Adobe commercial design products, such as Photoshop and Creative Suite, as well as Flash. Eunice said that makes them likely candidates to use Adobe's Flex and AIR, which enable them to create a wider range of Internet applications.
And in turn, said Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond, Adobe hopes that increasing use of Flex and AIR will bolster sales of its other design products as well as commercial software like LiveCycle, which is used to create server applications for businesses.
"It's definitely a battle to keep the developers on your platform," Hammond said.
Microsoft, meanwhile, "has been nibbling at the heels" of Adobe for the past two years, according to Hilwa, who called the latest version of Silverlight "a visual studio powerhouse" that provides a software infrastructure for video and other sophisticated applications. While Microsoft already has the leading operating system and Internet browser, he added, computer users are increasingly turning to the Web for the kind of applications they previously kept on their desktop.
"To the extent that the browser becomes the delivery vehicle for most applications, Microsoft is going to feel nervous about Windows becoming to some degree less important," he said. And it makes sense for Microsoft to want developers to keep using its tools.
"You don't want them to jump ship," Hilwa said. "If developers want tools, you want to offer them."
Sun has similar incentives to keep developers working within its family of software, analysts said. Unlike Microsoft or Adobe, Sun earns most of its revenue from hardware. But increasingly, the company is trying to boost hardware sales by building on the popularity of its software.
While Sun's Java programming language has been widely used for years, especially for server applications and mobile phones, the company only released its new platform for building more sophisticated Web applications in December.
"JavaFX is kind of late," said Eunice at Illuminata.
Echoing others, he said Sun's new platform has a strong appeal for its ability to support applications that can run both in a Web browser or independently on a desktop computer. But Eunice said a number of designers today aren't used to working with Java.
Adobe's AIR also allows developers to build Web-like applications that work independently of a browser. EBay, for example, used AIR to build an application that lets people monitor bidding on their desktop, without using a browser.
Adobe and Sun are also encouraging developers to build applications that work as well on mobile devices as they do on desktops. Sun released a JavaFX mobile platform earlier this month, while Adobe announced last week that its Flash Player 10 will be available for smart-phone manufacturers by the end of this year.
"All three of them have challenges," Forrester's Hammond said of the software-makers. But he also noted that Internet applications are still in an early stage of what's expected to be a growth market. For all three, he said, "they all want to be relevant, so they've all got to go where the developers are."
