2012/09/23

BBC Media Player for Android Devices

The “fast-changing environment” of mobile development has been well proved by the retreat of Adobe Flash from Android Mobile and the governing of HTML5, and BBC iPlayer’s permission for downloading as well.

Yet,Flash is still the best choice of media format to use, when taken so many factors into consideration: supports JellyBean and as well as earlier Android OS version like Gingerbread and FroYo; goes well with both websites and Android applications.

Thus, the BBC is launching a new media player for its iPlayer streaming app on Android powered devices: phones and tablets. In fact, BBC has supported iPlayer on Android since 2010 till its decision of removing the flash player plugin for Android.


BBC Media Player-BBC-Player-Android

The new media player is named BBC Media Player, which is already available on Google Play. BBC Media Player applies Adobe Flash’s “cousin” Adobe Air for streaming radio and video playback on Android devices.

“We want people to have the best experience possible when they're watching BBC TV programmes or listening to BBC radio programmes. This means, amongst other things, making them available on as many devices as is practical,” said Chris Yanda, executive product manager at BBC Future Media.

Facing the challenges of making services available across Android platforms as well as IOS, many broadcasters are trying to make that possible. BSkyB launched its Sky Go app for Android in January 2012 (8 months after its IOS version.)

Though many give priority to IOS platform, Android OS is quite a promising market as UK smartphone sales share in the 12 weeks to 10 June shows that: Android took 57.2% while iPhone accounted for a much less amount of 25.6.

"No technology is perfect. We've seen some of the challenges that other Adobe Air based apps have had in the marketplace and so we have worked hard, both internally and with our technology partners to build the best application we can," Yanda said. 

No comments:

Post a Comment