Flash Apps To Arrive On The iPhone, But Not On Safari

After today’s bad news, Adobe Senior Product Manager for Developer Relations Mike Chambers has announced a way to put Flash into the iPhone: Compile Flash into full standalone applications for the App Store. This solves part of the iPhone-Flash conundrum.

Using the next version of Flash Authoring—which is now in private beta — developers will be able to turn any Flash app or widget into an iPhone/iPod touch application. Some apps will require optimisation for the hardware limitations and the user interface:

The iPhone has a significantly slower processor and less memory than what can be found in a typical desktop computer. As such, existing content may need to be optimised for performance, and / or user interactions (given the smaller screen and different UI metaphors).

However, for publishers it would be really easier to adjust the code and come with a full app that could be made available easily, for free or for a price. While this doesn’t fix the lack of Flash into Safari—which Chambers says they are still working on—many Web publishers would be able to create iPhone-capable versions of their sites or part of their sites that can feed on the same online data as their browser-based counterparts. [Flash apps for iPhone and Mike Chambers]