Adobe announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress on Monday February 16th that Flash Player 10 will be available on Android as well Windows Mobile, Nokia S60/Symbian, and new Palm devices.
Anup Murarka, director of partner development and technology strategy at Adobe, stated Flash 10 will be available for these mobile phones by the end of 2009 according to ComputerWorld.
Adobe also said that it was “still not close” to providing Flash players for the iPhone or BlackBerrys.
Jack Gold, an independent analyst with J. Gold Associates, states two reasons why the iPhone and RIM devices would be left out.
- One is technical – “Adobe wants Flash to run really well. To get high performance, you need to run in the lower layers of the OS or phone.” – since Windows Mobile, Nokia’s Symbian and Android are relatively open to that, but the BlackBerry and iPhone are not.
- Two is Apple’s business practice – “Apple wants to push its own technology, in this case, QuickTime. It has its own interests at heart. Look at how long it took to get Flash onto Macs. I honestly don’t think you will see Flash on the iPhone anytime soon.”
Also announced by Adobe is that Flash Lite 3.1 for Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 which will automatically install when you download an app requiring it – so one can only assume it should come to Android soon as well.
So the continuing question is WHEN in 2009 will Flash be available for Android and while waiting will we be able to use Flash Lite 3.1?
19 comments… read them below or add one
I guess its safe to say by 12-31-09 Android will be Flash capable.
Way for Adobe to really play it safe on that one….lame.
It don’t look like the cupcake update is coming any time soon and now flash could possibly not be available till the end of the year. That sucks. Now I kinda wish I didn’t get a G1
Actually flash is available in the android market place, it just costs… I was really hoping for a free download since it is so actively used on the web… bottom line it is available now, and has been for about a month now.
adobe flash is not availible on the market there is flash availible but it doesnt work lol
didnt they already say this in November? We all know it’s coming. If it’s a year out they shouldn’t have said anything in November. A year in tech world is like 10 years out. My only reason for buying G1 was hoping flash will be on it sooner. Now my only hope is skyfire will work on android sooner. If not g1 only cost me $150, i guess i can buy another phone.
wat sense would it make to get another phone just because it doesnt have flash…
NONE!
haha i mean shyt we have youtube and many other video players…if the crap isnt on youtube then it really isnt even a worth watching…maybe we dont realize that the more and more web apps and web usability progresses Flash will soon be nomore, think we have jquery, ajax, mootools, php, xml and all these new technologies…
if you want flash for games, haha who still plays falsh games nowadays! by the time flash comes out we’ll have a million GAMES on the android why waste our time in some browser struggling to play a flash based one…
done talkin
Lady Brandon is so funny.
Ajax is over a decade (which in computer years is a century) old. PHP is even older. Comparing Flash, PHP and AJAX is silly.
Thanks for the laugh. I needed it.
totally erroneous assertion. This is the kind of mentality we see with people who don't really know much about the internet. There are sites like justin.tv that are in and of themselves a compelling reason to pick a phone with flash enabled browsing over phones w/out. Most who are interested, like myself, would like to be able to watch all the pirated goodness on JTV while, for example, traveling. Perhaps its an overly broad generalization to say "don't really know much about the internet." Yes, I just quoted and qualified my own proposition, but I digress. However, listing some new technologies does not mean flash is old news. JTV on my smartphone is a prerequisite, as well as for just about anyone else wondering about when flash will be available. That's why skyfire is such a compelling product. It allows you to watch these things called movies and also shows that aren't on these sites called youtube b/c youtube limits videos to 10 minutes. My dear watson, simple logic refutes your entire premise. And, just because you don't know what justin.tv is doesn't mean flash is useless on a phone. God speed.
Cool…
Here’s my post about Android..
http://opensourcethefuture.blog.co.in/2009/02/22/android/
Sudipto Sarkars last blog post..Android
I concure, brandon is silly.
Absolutely.
The versatility of flash lends itself to a lot more than just games or video viewers. An awful lot of sites take advantage of the near universal availability of flash-enabled platforms/browsers to offer rich content, and even content management and creation. The sheer prevalence of flash-based web tools for a wide variety of uses simply keeps expanding, and the abandonment of Flash would leave Android-enabled phones isolated from a vast swathe of the internet community.
That Apple would shun Flash is no surprise – the shortcomings of the iPhone are many, and it’s hard to pin the blame on a deliberately restrictive (and somewhat obtuse) design vision, or the incredible short-sightedness of Apple’s developers in missing features that have been in widespread use on equivalent platforms for years.
Android would benefit from encouraging expansion and adopting well-used standards for the sake not just of maximum usability (being an essentially web-centric device), but for a good old fashioned competitive edge in an ever-growing industry.
The iPhone was never really competition for anything already established, but it pioneers poorly enough in some areas to have opened a massive market for worthy competition – which is why every other major platform developer is emulating the successful ‘App Store’ format for their particular flavour of mobile devices now.
Refusing to allow Flash on a competing platform now would be a massive standards omission and a poor business decision.
That’s just my opinion, of course.
We want flash cause most of the coolest shit on the net is in flash. Plain and simple… that said I think the problem is more these phones arent optimized for the flash player & visa versa. So that player has to be created in such a way that will fit on the phone and tie into the gpu in a decent way … hopefully good enough for strong 3d support!! That seems somewhat complicated but not impossible by any stretch. The g1 is linux based afterall & we know flash 10 works perfect on linux. I think the problem is hardware … these phones are probably not strong enough or dont have enough memory to be good for a regular flash player. All I do know is that I cant freakin wait for flash on my G1 … its like half the internet including is walled off by a void. Not really what I was hoping for.
i saw adobe flash player on the market yesterday and it was the legit thing unfortunately thanks to androids errors in the market i was unable to purchase it for 3.99 if anybody else can find it (because now i can’t locate it) please let me know
Right now I’m leaning towards picking up an iPhone, but Flash is a game changer for me. If Flash really does make it to the Android then I will definitely choose that over the iPhone. Oh and I would love to see Silverlight make it on the Android too, imagine watching hulu T.V. shows and Netflix movies on your phone.
Don’t get an iphone unless you want to be forced to purchase newer, upgraded, handsets every year or so. Android is as powerful as its community of developers…there is a lot of pride in the android project, and as a g1 owner..regardless of flash, I am glad to be involved. But yes…flash would rock because that means redtube.com!
LOLOLOLOLOLOL "Redtube.com" haha I know right!
Adobe flash is a cool platform for creating something innovative and creative. Even Forum Nokia’s 2009 calling All Innovators contest have a special category for developers to submit applications designed on Flash.
I hate quicktime. Android supports flash. case closed.