Adobe and Zend Technologies, the PHP distribution company, are announcing Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP software, a new integrated product aimed at helping PHP developers create rich Internet applications for mobile, Web and desktop leveraging the Flash Platform.

Zend, which has been working with Adobe since 2008, offers its own distribution of PHP, the popular open-source scripting language for Web applications, and sells software and support services around the language.

The Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP gives developers a single code base for applications for Android, Blackberry Tablet OS and iOS while sharing code from Web applications. Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 for PHP includes an integrated copy of Zend Studio 8, which allows developers to develop Flash based applications within a single environment. Specifically, the integrated software offers a single UI framework to create Flex and PHP projects for desktop and mobile and the ability to connect to PHP services and generate ActionScript value objects.

The combination of the two frameworks in one suite is powerful, says Zend CEO Andi Gutmans. Adobe says that more than 131 million smartphones are expected to have Flash Player installed by the end of the year. And PHP is the leading language for public facing web applications, says Gutmans.

This could be interesting… I still think Adobe sat on it’s dominance with Flash far too long and let other companies / technologies catch up.

The acquisition includes both talent and technology, so Ping.fm co-founders Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough are now Seesmic shareholders and key members of the management team. They will begin immediately integrating Ping.fm technology into Seesmic applications.

Sometime in January you can expect updates to Seesmic’s Blackberry, Android, web, Windows and OSX (via Air) apps. Each will add advanced Ping.fm integration, supporting the ability to post to 50 social networks with a single update, special Ping.fm triggers to specify posting to specific social sites, and the option of using Ping.fm’s e-mail, SMS and chat functionality.

Ping.fm currently boasts 200,000 updates a day from its 500,000 registered members. More than 100 applications already use the Ping.fm API for cross-posting purposes, and although Seesmic will assume full control of the platform, they’re committed to maintaining it and supporting the developer community.

The maneuver no doubt means that Seesmic is now infringing upon TweetDeck’s territory and mission with ambitions to be much more than just a Twitter client. Ultimately, Seesmic aims to be your primary gateway to the social web and to serve 1,000,000 updates per day in 2010.

The iPhone now accounts for 50 percent of mobile Web traffic from smartphones in the U.S., according to an AdMob Mobile Metrics report released this morning. Over the past six months, the iPhone has taken share from Blackberry and Windows Mobile. In August 2008, the iPhone made up only 10 percent of mobile Web traffic from smartphones. During the same time, Blackberry’s share has gone from 32 percent to 21 percent (with the Curve and the Pearl coming in stronger than the Storm), while Windows Mobile has taken an even bigger hit, declining from 30 percent to 13 percent. Palm is also down to 7 percent from 19 percent six months ago.

The only other smartphone operating system that is showing gains in mobile Web usage is Android, which has captured a strong 5 percent share just three months after launch. And that is up from 3 percent in January. The gains shown by the iPhone and Android show what is possible when phones are built with fully capable browsers and support a rich array of Web apps…

Read the full article at TechCrunch.

Android smartphone sales will outstrip iPhone sales by 2012, market researcher Informa Telecoms & Media has predicted in a new report.

Last month, Telefonica Europe said that sales of the iPhone topped 1 million in the U.K. Although T-Mobile UK–the exclusive carrier of the first Android device, the G1–wouldn’t say exactly how many of the devices had been sold, it did say the handset now accounts for 20 percent of its contract sales.

Web behemoth Google released the first beta developers kit for its Android open OS platform in August, with the first handset–the G1 smartphone–launching the following month. A second handset, the Magic, is expected to arrive next month.

Apple’s iPhone has a slightly longer heritage–with the first device arriving in the U.S. in June 2007. However, the iPhone 3G hit stores last July, giving it only a few months’ head start on its Google rival.

Both Android and OS X are eating into the market share of the best-selling smartphone OS maker, Symbian. Last year, just under half of smartphones sold were based on Symbian–a drop of 16 percentage points from the year before when it had 65 percent market share. BlackBerry OS, Linux, and Windows Mobile are also gaining popularity and eating some of Symbian’s share, according to Informa.

See the full article at CNET News.