Ansca Mobile raises $1M to build Adobe Flash rival for iPhone apps

Ansca Mobile, a company founded by Adobe veterans to create an alternative platform for iPhone development, has raised $1 million in its first outside funding. The entire round comes from Merus Capital.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ansca has created a platform called Corona, which it describes as the fastest, easiest way to build iPhone apps. The programming commands are supposedly simpler than the Objective C language used for most iPhone apps, but Corona still lets you take advantage of cool iPhone capabilities like the accelerometer and graphics acceleration.

Ansca’s technology could also be seen as an alternative to Adobe’s Flash technology, which powers lots of web video and applications, and which Adobe is pushing onto smartphones. There’s a personal connection here: Ansca’s chief executive Carlos Icaza and chief technology officer Walter Luh both worked on the mobile version of Flash when they were at Adobe. (Apparently Adobe’s still waiting for approval from Apple to bring Flash to the iPhone, but for now it’s adding a workaround that converts Flash apps into iPhone apps.)

Ansca has already launched version 1.0 of Corona, and says it plans to expand to other smartphone platforms eventually.

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