Adobe is reportedly mulling to stop support for Flash Player for mobile devices.
“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,” reported ZDNet citing a press release from the company.
There was a strong anticipation of the closure of Flash support for quite some time and many developers has HTLM5 version of their existing Flash apps. So even if Adobe annuls support for Flash, users would not feel much hassle.
From now onwards, the company will now focus on Flash for the desktop and Adobe AIR and HTML5 for mobile development.
It was in April 2010 that Steve Jobs had published an open letter in which he clarified why Adobe Flash support was not there on Apple mobile devices.
He said, “Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it.”
Jobs also said, “Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers”. Android has been different in this respect because Flash Players have always been available on these devices and users had the option to turn it on or off.