R.I.P Mobile Flash: Can We Say it Now? Steve Jobs was Right. Again!
By: Hillel Fuld
BOOM! (I wouldn’t dare use that word to start a post unless it seriously deserved it and that seems to be the case here.) ZDNet just exclusively reported that Adobe is stopping to develop Flash for mobile browsers and focusing its efforts on HTML5. Read the post here
The Adobe source stated
“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. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.”
Additionally, an email to Adobe partners was summarized as follows:
- Adobe is Stopping development on Flash Player for browsers on mobile.
Adobe is now focusing their development efforts on:
- Applications for mobile
- Expressive content on the desktop (in and out of browser)
- Increasing their investments in HTML5 in general”
Yes, this is pretty huge and Steve Jobs who battled the Flash technology for years by banning it on all iOS devices, seems to have predicted that Flash would indeed die. You can read his thoughts here. Side point: This is a little strange considering Adobe’s announcement a few months back that they would release Media Server to allow Flash content on iOS.
On a personal note, I can say that close to 100% of the crashes I experience on my Macbook, my Android tablet, my Playbook, and Google Chrome originate from Flash content, so I am also smiling about this announcement.
In any case, this is big, no, huge news for mobile consumers and especially Apple fans. Looks like it won’t be long before HTML5 is everywhere and that annoying error all iOS users are used to seeing is nowhere to be found.
