Adobe Kills Flash For Mobile Devices

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Ever since the original iPad came out a little over 2 years ago, there have been raging debates over Apple’s decision to exclude Flash from it’s iOS devices.  Aside from the verbal sparring between Apple and Adobe, tens of thousands of Internet users have voiced their opinions of the Flash vs. no Flash debate.  Turns out the pro-Flash crowd has had the rug pulled out from under them, as Adobe announced this week it will no longer develop Flash for mobile devices.

Or to put it another way, Steve Jobs won this battle posthumously.  In fact, here’s the surprising and abrupt announcement from Adobe VP Danny Winokur “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. 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.”

A few of things to keep in mind about Adobe’s surprising decision.  First, Adobe will continue releasing bug and security patches for the most recent versions of the mobile Flash player.  They will not however, be developing any new or updated versions of the mobile Flash player.  Development on it is now dead.

Some mobile device manufacturers own a source code license for Flash player.  That means these individual companies can (and most likely will) develop their own custom versions of Flash player.  If you’re wondering why these companies would continue to cling to technology that the developer themselves is abandoning, remember that Flash support has been the main marketing pitch of iPad competitors.  And they’ll want to hang on to it as long as they can.

Finally, for web video producers, Adobe’s announcement doesn’t mean a whole lot.  Flash was abandoned long ago by video producers who wanted their videos to play on mobile devices…so if that’s you, you have no worries.

 

3 comments

  • Dave, please educate me (us) on this point: What are the real-life ramifications for Android users? Does this affect Youtube, Vimeo, and the like?

  • Hi Dave. Very interesting, but what about us guys in the green screen video biz. I understand that HTML5 does not support an alpha channel so how are we going to play our talking head videos in HTML5.
    Thanks and keep up the education of the the masses…

  • @David – You are correct…only Flash video supports an alpha channel…H.264 video currently does not. So when it comes to mobile devices, the service you provide will not work and there’s not much you can do about it.