Adobe abandoning Flash Player on mobile, says HTML5 is the future
In an interesting and unexpected turn, Adobe today announced that they will no longer be updating or maintaining their Flash Player on mobile devices. More specifically, this action will affect Android devices that support the technology and the BlackBerry PlayBook after the release of Flash Player 11.
Adobe has made this decision as part of a larger plan to take the company in a new direction. Instead of Flash, they will now be focusing on using Air for development of mobile applications, and HTML5 for other in-browser multimedia content.
In their own words, "HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively…Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR."
As Flash was a selling point of Android, some may wonder how the lack of updated Flash will affect the platform. Realistically, it probably won't be much of a problem. Content was already trending to HTML5, and Flash games are being phased out or converted into Air. While it may take away a bragging point for some Android fans, most users will not see their daily use affected anyways.
This is mostly because Flash was already in the process of being phased out. Fewer and fewer websites require Flash, and gaming on a mobile device is no longer flash based. At least from personal experience, I can say that while I have Flash on my phone, I hardly ever use it, if at all. As such, I am generally inclined to think that this decision can only be a good one. Seeing everyone rally behind the standard of HTML5 will be a good thing for consumers, and anyways, Apple was partially right about Flash being problematic on mobile devices.
[Android Central]
