Wow. It seems Adobe is stopping development of its Flash Player for mobile browsers. The company will reportedly continue to support existing Android and BlackBerry Playbook configurations of the player, but future development will be focused on developing HTML5 and apps.
According to ZDNet, Developers were briefed by Adobe about the situation, which will be expanded upon later today on Adobe’s official site:
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.
Adobe earlier announced that it would be laying off 750 employees in a wider restructuring, but didn’t specify which departments would be hit.
Somewhere, Steve Jobs is probably smiling. [ZDNet]
Update: Here’s the official spin-and-damage-control update from Adobe. It reads about as expected: “We were mobile superheroes for offering Flash Player for browsers, but now HTML5 is good enough. We’ll be working on apps and stuff—have you checked out Adobe AIR??” And so forth.
Joel
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 12:44 AMlol
Kroo
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 6:29 AMJobs was right. Ding dong the witch is dead!!!!! Now can expect some 21st century technology from you Adobe?
Chris
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 8:21 AMI wouldn’t say ding dong the witch is dead exactly. Maybey for mobile devices, yes. But flash is still here to stay for a loooong time buddy. Especially when it comes to online advertising and gaming. There isn’t really anything that can replace it yet, soon maybe, but pumping out a flash banner ad takes about 1 tenth of the time it would take to create it in html 5, java etc. Also there are no platformas available that offer online animated advertising in other formats other than flash (except .gif’s, but this is used for a backup in case a user does not have flash).
Sam D
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 8:51 AMI think that’s the point though. Yes, currently flash is quicker to develop than HTML5, but Adobe are moving their efforts towards making HTML5 easier than it currently is.
BenDTU
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 8:05 AMInsert any smug comment here.
Steve
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 8:46 AMWow, interesting! It’s hard to know if this would have happened if Apple committed to flash. Definitely Adobe would have needed to scale up their operations to fix its issues quickly back then. And maybe flash technology would be different to what it is now…
Johnny P
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 8:55 AMOne less reason to get an android phone….
Harvz
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:37 AMnot really as its still going to be a long time b4 HTML5 is used over the web.
olearymo
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 9:12 AMABOUT TIME. I’m a Flash developer by trade, but as with everyone else that’s changing.
The Flash development environment (timeline, etc) is perfectly good but what it spits out (swf format) simply doesn’t cut it these days. Great to see Adobe realised they can have the best of both worlds and actually make tools to create great HTML5.
I feel this would’ve happened eventually regardless of Apple.
Jack
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 10:45 AMyour last sentence is interesting, but to me it sounds more like sour grapes.
olearymo
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 2:42 PMReally? You mean it sounds like I have sour grapes about Adobe dropping Flash mobile? No… I’m happy about it. I thought my ‘ABOUT TIME’ conveyed that? I’m confused.
Or do you mean Adobe has sour grapes with Apple?
James
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 12:47 PMA zillion android fanboys sit in silence……….
moloko
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 2:41 PMOh noes the media have started with their “Omg Steve Jobs was a complete genius and was right about Flash” headlines.
James
Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 3:00 PMwell of course they are…..it’s true after all.