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Nov. 22, 2008

Adobe says it has made its Flash technology compatible with the Android smartphone operating system developed by the Google-backed Open Handset Alliance.

Yesterday, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch demonstrated Flash Player version 10 running on Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android platforms.

However, Lynch said Flash technology isn't ready yet for the iPhone, but that Adobe is working on it and should be ready before March 2009.

But at an Apple shareholder meeting earlier this spring, CEO Steve Jobs said that Flash won’t be coming to the iPhone anytime soon. Jobs said the full-blown version of Flash would perform poorly on the iPhone, and even Flash Lite isn’t the spirit of the iPhone’s full Internet experience.

Earlier this week, Andy Rubin, Google’s director of mobile platforms, along with Adobe’s Lynch announced the effort at Adobe MAX, the company’s developer conference.

They presented a demo of Flash 10 running on a G1, which is manufactured by HTC Wireless.

Adobe and ARM announced a technology collaboration designed to optimize and enable Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR for ARM Powered devices like the Apple iPhone.

However, Flash support could still be a big draw, enabling Web video such as YouTube and interactivity which is what most iPhone users would want.

A recent survey by mobile gaming and content firm Artificial Life found that about 46 percent of mobile device owners use mobile devices for entertainment. The survey also found that 87.5 percent of smartphone users access entertainment content, such as music, games and video, and that 33 percent use the phone for entertainment over any other purpose, including e-mail, GPS, and Internet browsing.

Rubin said Flash is crucial to mobile devices. “We are thrilled that Google will be one of the first companies along with the Open Handset Alliance to bring Flash technology to the smartphone market,” he said in a release.

Along with Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices, Apple’s iPhone is one of the very few phones that doesn’t have Flash technology support.

Those two aside, Flash is available on certain mobile platforms including Symbian, Qualcomm BREW, Sony Ericsson, Windows Mobile and Linux.

Adobe said Flash has shipped on more than 800 million mobile phones and is expected to be on more than 1 billion handsets by early 2009.

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Source: Adobe Systems.