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Adobe axes mobile Flash Player in favour of HTML 5

by Steven Williamson on 9 November 2011, 12:40

Tags: Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE)

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According to an alleged leaked internal mail, Adobe Systems plans to abandon its Flash plug-ins for mobile browsers, choosing to concentrate on native applications and HTML 5 development instead.

ZDNET claims to have received an email briefing from Adobe that reveals the software company will continue to provide updates for Flash Player on Android and Blackberry devices, but will switch its focus to HTML 5, which has continued to evolve and is now able to run multimedia on any good browser.

“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,” reads Adobe’s statement.

New focus for Adobe as flash on mobile gets the heave-ho


“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,” said the company.

Former Apple CEO, Steve Jobs was very vocal about Adobe Flash, saying in 2010 that it is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content with Adobe’s software and that “new open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win". Apple, of course, didn’t include Flash support on any of its iOs systems.

The news comes following an announcement by Adobe that it plans to shed seven per cent of its workforce across US and Europe, with an estimated 750 employees losing their jobs so that the company can focus more on digital media and digital marketing.

Further details on Adobe’s new plans and strategy are expected to be unveiled over the next couple of days.


HEXUS Forums :: 16 Comments

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Good. If adobe pushes for HTML5 on mobile, then desktop will benefit from killing off flash, as well.
As I said earlier, as a former, experienced Flash developer, all I can say is “YAY!”
Wouldn't say good.

Good would be putting effort in making the HTML5 tools better.

This is bad because there are people who've made an investment in Flash, which won't be able to fully realise it. So what if it runs dog slow, people should be carrotted on to a better platform! Not forced. I'm sure there are some tasks which Flash is still a much better bet than HTML5 for, and will probably continue to be the case for the next short while.

So I don't care if they stop investment in the dev tools, but to stop investment in the runtime is a bit of a pain for some I'd imagine.
This is good news for consumers - maybe not so much for the businesses heavily invested in flash..but for end users? Brilliant news..IF Adobe really do push HTML5 strongly and develop the players (and ideally, compatibility layers to allow at least a selection of existing flash apps to run).

Flash has been a “dead duck” for a while IMO - plagued by performance issues for many years despite the recent improvements..any move away from it and towards a more standards driven approach is great news from my point of view.
Bet Steve Jobs is smiling in his grave!