"San Francisco - Facing serious challenges to its dominance in the RIA (rich Internet application) space, Adobe Systems will refresh its bread-and-butter Flash Player technology Thursday with capabilities that could provide an edge on the RIA battleground.
Adobe officials argued that improvements in its new Flash Player 10 such as custom filters and effects are merely in response to customer demands. But the company nonetheless has seen its market niche -- rich graphical presentations via a browser plugin -- become more crowded lately. Microsoft's highly touted Silverlight technology is drawing attention from companies such as NBC while Sun plans to leverage the prevalence of its Java technology to promote its budding JavaFX RIA platform.
Analysts see Flash Player 10 as an answer to what else is going on in the marketplace.
"Everything in this space is a response," to keep up with the competition, said Jeffrey Hammond, senior analyst at Forrester. Flash, though, remains a leader with capabilities in drawing surface and canvas, he said.
"I think that Adobe continues to basically build on the Flash franchise and try to defend it," said Gartner analyst Ray Valdes. "It???s a competitive response in some ways.""
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