Adobe Recasts Flash as an App Builder and Embraces HTML5, the Flash Mobile Killer

But you can’t play Flash content on an iPhone! Well, we can cross that argument off the mobile decision grid. According to a scoop last night on ZDNet, Adobe has announced that they are stopping development on Flash Player for mobile browsers. ”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. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations.”

Adobe is, in fact, finally heeding Steve Jobs’ advice. In a public letter about Flash last year, Jobs said, “Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. … New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.”

Adobe is, of course, aiming for a positive spin, on an official Adobe blog, Danny Winokur, VP & GM for Interactive Development, wrote, “Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices. … However, 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.”

On Sitepoint’s designfestival, Joel Falconer points out that this is all part of a larger strategy by Adobe to be a player in the world of HTML5 and cites their recent acquisition of the web font service Typekit and the release of a flash to HTML5 converter as evidence of the shift.

For those of us who have felt that HTML5 was clearly the future, we no longer have to ask ourselves, “but what about Flash?” It’s now clear that Flash has a role behind the scenes in game development and high end app creation—which seems like a good place for a proprietary technology to be. As HTML5 and the open web become increasingly app-like, proprietary (and paid) native apps will continue to be in the vanguard of mobile development because of their ability to integrate with ever-evolving hardware capabilities. True to form, Adobe is playing all the horses.


Via: Forbes