Adobe Flash Player Coming To Smartphones
Supported platforms will include Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and WebOS. Flash Player 10 for mobile devices will enable smartphones to deliver a richer Internet browsing experience. The platform will also support development of web-based applications, theoretically freeing developers from individual application stores.
During a recent earnings call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said
many partners have already received an early copy of Flash Player 10.
Developers can expect to get their hands on a beta version of the mobile player
later this year at Adobe's Max conference in October. As you may have already noticed, there are two big names missing from the list of supported platforms: Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry platform. In February, Narayen said Adobe and Apple are working on Flash for the iPhone but gave no specific launch date. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has said in the past that Flash is not good enough for the iPhone because of its resource requirements. Jobs’ comments makes many wonder if Flash will ever come to the iPhone.
Adobe has also confirmed it is working with RIM, though the two companies aren’t far enough in the development process to announce anything. In the meantime, other smartphone platforms will be given the chance to boast about bringing a richer Internet browsing experience to mobile devices.
Google’s Android platform is set to benefit significantly from the release of Flash 10, especially since a handful of smartphones running on this platform are expected in the coming months. The second version of this OS (aka Donut) is also expected around the same time as the launch of Adobe Flash Player 10 mobile.
Even though Palm’s WebOS just came out on the new Palm Pre, Palm was involved with Flash 10 from the early stages. Palm has yet to release a software development kit for this new OS (it’s expected at the end of this summer), which means Flash 10’s ability to provide an additional avenue for creating WebOS applications will also be very important.
Given the way development cycles tend to work, we wouldn’t expect to see users benefiting from applications built on the new Flash 10 platform until early 2010. After all, developers will need time after the beta version is released to create, test, and launch the applications.
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Via: TechNewsWorld | News Archive
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Comments
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Given the level of support that Adobe has given to 64-bit and Linux, I wouldn't be surprised if Flash doesn't totally *suck* on these devices. Still, I have to give them props for surviving this long: They're basically trying to insert an API layer between the web and the OS (making apps dependant on the layer, and not the OS), and that's gotten many a previous company bought-out or stomped into oblivion by Microsoft. Uhmmm.. not that Microsoft hasn't already recognized this and started the stomping with the introduction of Silverlight.... |
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Quick afterthought: Mark my words - Microsoft will tolerate, even support, the Moonlight project (http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight) until such time as Flash has been rendered impotent. At that point, Microsoft will jump to the next step - extending Silverlight in a non-documented way so as to make all other OS's incompatible. It's happened before and it will happen again. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana. |
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Hmm... Now that you put it that way. I see what you mean. Though somebody needed to innovate back in the day. Now I guess it's time for them to be assimilated? |
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Microsoft hasn't been able to use their traditional EEE strategy because Adobe's closed source, so they're going the Netscape route. |
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IE supported the Mac until such time as Netscape was defunct (IE4?), then dropped all pretenses of cross-platform support. The end result is that if you wanted to see web pages consistent with the way they were created... you had to have IE6... which you can only legally have with a Windows license. I think this is where there going with Silverlight, in the long run. Thank goodness for open source FF, and whatever black magic Opera uses to stay in business. |
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