Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2009 in Barcelona, Spain kicked off today and with it comes a glut of information from various mobile phone and related companies on new products and offerings. One of the things that many hoped to hear from Adobe at MWC was Flash for the iPhone.

While the iPhone Flash announcement hasn't been made, Adobe announced it is extending the reach of the Flash platform with a new joint effort with Nokia called the Open Screen Project. Adobe and Nokia have funded the project with $10 million that the companies say will be given in the form of grants. Adobe's Anup Murarka said, "This is an effort to foster the creation, distribution and marketing of applications. It is a vehicle for grants; it is not a VC [venture capital] fund."

Adobe and Nokia will be taking applications from developers for grant money. Concepts submitted will be required to work on multiple screens including mobile screens, desktop and other consumer electronic devices. Applications will be judged for how robust the application or planned implementation is, how well it exploits the capabilities of Nokia devices and those of Adobe Flash and AIR platforms.

Adobe's David Wadhwani said, "We are excited about the Open Screen Project Fund and the possibilities it offers to designers and developers worldwide. With close to 40 percent of all new mobile devices shipped with Flash Lite in 2008, the fund will enable more developers to bring their rich content and services to a large number of mobile users."

Projects submitted for grants will be reviewed by a team of multi-screen application and service experts from Open Screen Project partners that include Adobe, Nokia, and Palm. Adobe also previewed its Flash 10 platform for mobile devices at MWC 2009 along with new support for e-book and PDFs on mobile devices. Adobe plans to offer Flash on a wide range of devices including Blu-ray players to extend the formats reach.