Toronto hosted the latest "FITC" Flash Conference last weekend. While most of the conference was preoccupied with Flash-based art projects in one form or another, the real news from the conference was the announcement of Verizon's deal with Adobe. Verizon, as we mentioned last week, is planning to embed Flash on their rich-media capable cellphones. This follows the Asian trend where Flash capable phones are the standard rather than the exception.

We've seen the market potential of cellphone ring tones. Flash capable phones provide a new distribution platform for a host of products and services that have yet to be factored into the Adobe stock price. Adobe acquired Macromedia last year to expand its product base. Flash, in this context, is becoming an operating platform rather than an application. Developers are encouraged to make new products for mobile users.

While at the conference I spoke with a source who said Yahoo is planning a Flash-lite push - in fact, Yahoo is the largest Flash developer!