In a recent blog post by one of its executives, Adobe said that it would no longer be developing its popular Flash for mobile devices. Instead it would aggressively contribute towards HTML5.
Here is the key point from the post –
“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 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.”
This is a serious threat to Android devices that often take advantage of flash compatibility over the iPhone and iPad. Since 2007, not one of the Apple’s mobile devices has included the plugin.
With this announcement, I am reminded of an open letter Steve Jobs wrote last year regarding Adobe flash. In that letter, Steve listed number of reasons including poor performance, poor battery life, and major security concerns. Instead he recommended to use more open web technology like HTML5. I hear news that Microsoft is also planning to kill Silverlight soon in next few months.
At a 2010 stage interview at All Things Digital conference, Steve talked Flash trashing and defended his decision towards Flash discontinuation. Interesting video to watch:
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