No more Flash for mobile browsers says Adobe

Stan Beer
Thursday, 10 November 2011 07:01

IT Industry - Strategy

Adobe has thrown in the towel in its efforts to get Flash adopted as a standard platform for Web video on mobile browsers, announcing that it will cease development on Flash Player for new mobile devices. The move comes after years of trying and failing to get Apple to use Flash Player for the iPhone and iPad and will result in the loss of 750 jobs, according to Adobe.

 

In a blog on the Adobe site, Danny Winokur, Vice President & General Manager, Interactive Development at Adobe, admitted that HTML5 had won the war for the development platform of choice in the mobile space.

"HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively.  This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms," said Winokur.

"We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.  We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations.  We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations."

However, Adobe will continue to support developers of mobile applications for App stores.

"Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores," said Winokur.

According to Winokur, Adobe will now turn all of its focus on Flash for the PC desktop space, while contributing to HTML5 development for mobile platforms.

"We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers," he said.

"These changes will allow us to increase investment in HTML5 and innovate with Flash where it can have most impact for the industry, including advanced gaming and premium video."