Adobe wants everyone to know that its fully-featured Flash Player, not the dinky lite version, will be available on many mobile phones . . . in 2010. So hang tight until then. The phones that will support Flash 10 include the Palm Pre, Nokia S60 models, Android phones, and Windows Mobile (but we already knew about those last two). Seriously, Adobe has been working on this for how long now? Maybe it is waiting for phones to come out with their own special Flash graphics processors.
Conspicuously absent from this vaporware announcement is the iPhone. Apple still thinks Flash is a resource hog and likely has some other business issues with it (even though Adobe is waiving its license fee for Flash on mobile devices).
Adobe cannot afford to continue to be invisible on mobile phones. To spur developers to create mobile Flash apps, it also announced a new $10 million fund in conjunction with Nokia around its Open Screen Project. The fund will provide grants to developers who create mobile apps that run on the Flash platform (including Adobe Air apps), Nokia phones, and other devices.
What about JavaFX on Android ??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtUX-GS36o8
pfffftttt…
I’m an Adobe CS3 design premium licensee, and Flex 3 IDE licensee as well.
The fact that they left Flex 3 out of CS3 premium suites left me SO BITTER, that I think JavaFX will have to take it’s place.
Bye Adobe. Teh Mobile is n0t for u.
Erick – great post. This weekend had a strategy meeting around our next gen development apps. We are wondering what is the status of Adobe. Looks like they are being stone walled. Hope they spend money on early initiatives otherwise the battle will be upstream in the future.
“in conjunction with Nokia”
They lost 90% of developers right there. Only game companies are still included in that.
Had that “in conjunction with Nokia” not been there, it would have had a chance.
What do you mean by that? Is Nokia that bad?
RIM’s Blackberry getting flash also looks dim.
http://www.googleandblog.com/adobe-announces-flash-for-android-at-mobile-world-congress-in-barcelona/3785/
Any news on Flash Lite 3.1 being available for Android?
,Michael Martin
Google And Blog
I stopped buying the Adobe products after Macromedia was bought out.
At least with Macromedia being the driving force the developers were not forced to pay for certain packages separately. There is a truism that says what you fear will come to pass.
By being silly and greedy flash is going to limp along and if they continue charging the way they have been, the flex is a case in point, in my humble opinion if it was still Macromedia it would have been included just as the flash was in the Studio version wish is no longer , now we have a microsoftesque confusion as to which bundle do I buy? So I dont.
I have stopped at version 8 by macromedia and I am busy switching to Open Source/Free software such as The Gimp Eclipse and so forth.
Flash web sites are all but invisible for Google/Yahoo/MSN and in countries that have dial-up speed broadband.
The cost of downloading that flash file – I think Apple (APPL) is right, the cost for using that application would be unbelievable.
IIts fine if you can get the T-Mobile’s unlimted ppackage but that is only available in a limited number of countries and not at all available in the third largest mobile market – Africa so no thanks.
Archos has supported Flash on their devices since 2007 with the Archos 5, the Archos 7, the Archos 605 WiFi, 705 WiFi, they all support flash such as from Youtube, Google Video, Dailymotion and plenty of other flash sites.
Well, flash 9 on the N800 is COMPLETELY unusable. Whether that be Nokia’s OS (Maemo) or the hardware (which is not too shabby compared to a lot of smart phones) I don’t know. But it is painful, and flash video “only just” plays still.
Enabling Flash might mean that Apple will sell less apps on iTunes. Imagine a world of free games you could play on your iPhone. Do you really think Apple won’t do everything in its powers to delay that?
I am all for open. But everything free is crazy! People have to make a living, and in my discussions with various record labels, they seem to reiterate that they can make a living off of Apple, but not for example eMusic. Learning Objective C is relatively easy if you have coded in Java or C. And, most importantly it has zero lag for local content. My experience with Flash on devices is less than appealing.
There is this nice article about CSS animation that makes the iPhone less dependence on Flash http://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/06/css-animation-coming-to-safari-already-in-iphone-less-dependence-on-flash/
thats nice to hear.
I love Flash as much as the next guy but this is rubbish. It’s like the Wii, a half baked Flash player makes for a crap experience.
The anger here is impressive. One runtime to run the same app on multiple platforms is HARD. Its great news that its still coming. Shame on Apple for continuing its closed system locking out everything that could be considered competition. There isn’t a technical issue with flash and iphone I am certain, only a business model issue.
And, what devices does Flash run well on?
Shh! Don’t implement logic in your reasoning! You will interfere with the bitter Apple hate!
I love commenters like joshua whose only evidence to support their claims — claims that are utterly counterintuitive to anybody’s firsthand experience — is “i am certain”.
well actually..
its not that hard to assume that apple CAN run flash in the iphone as when it was released it was expressed that the iphone product was a slimmed down version of MacOSX.
Of course which does run adobe flash.
.. and before you assault the above comments regarding apple and its tight grip on their business models, dont forget that although the poster did not cite and references, it has always been well known that apple uses strong proprietary models in controlling their business and protecting the growth of their products.
It’s not Apple-hate, just recognition of the bleeding obvious that as soon as there is a decent Flash player on the iPhone, no-one will be buying games (and many other types of apps) from the App Store anymore. Of course, Adobe has been running Flash on the iPhone emulator since last June and you would expect that would have done at least some optimisation since then.
Apple is eventually going to have to get on board with flash. As much as they don’t want to, as much as they have their reasons that they shouldn’t do it, they’re going to. At the very least they’re going to have to have some crappy version. If they want to be the top of the line in their market, they’re going to need to have it. It’s just going to be a matter of time.
http://www.twitter.com/dankalmar
Flash has a massive install-base but is otherwise an inferior product by a large margin (remind you of anything?).
Adobe have been *seriously* lucky that Flash was picked up and used for video delivery otherwise they would still be a format for web banner ads and other annoying intrusions.
All evidence points to the fact that they are incapable of producing a Flash product that doesn’t require excessive resources. Their only hope for mobile devices is for the hardware to catch up.
A couple of points that people here seem incapable of understanding:
1) When computers deal with video, sound, large photos, scaling vector artwork for animation, and other graphics intensive tasks, THEY REQUIRE PROCESSING POWER that is greater than simpler things like rendering a page of text for example. This is true for software running locally on a computer AND for things running from the internet in a web browser.
2) A handheld device isn’t quite the same as a laptop for processor, memory and onboard video processing (gpu etc).
Doesn’t it seem a bit logical that it’s not easy for things to play perfectly on a phone with today’s hardware?
It’s easy to say flash sucks on a desktop or mobile device, but where is the benchmark for comparison? What other browser plugins are accomplishing the same demanding interactivity better than Flash? There are none that come close. Javascript doesn’t do the same things and there is very little Silverlight content to compare to. JavaFX? Sproutcore? not even close.
iPhone and android phones will have powerful enough hardware in the next few years and with an optimized flash 10 player that taps into the system more than a browser version we will have a sufficient solution.
And if people don’t want flash content they don’t have to have it and can turn it off and shut the hell up. Some of us want the choice just like we have on a desktop or laptop. And some of us don’t have petty gripes against Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and just want to see good content.
Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 for mobile will do exactly the same. The Silverlight runtime will be a code once and work on the desktop, web and mobile from the exact same compiled package (xap file).
Flash seems to be a little behind on this.
delete flash from the web. == no vidéo, no music, no game .
Hmmmm …. nice world !
It is already possible to do remarkably good stuff with Flash Lite. Has been for several years. The problem is Adobe hasn’t got a (can I swear here?) clue how to go about marketing it.
First, the name. What comes to mind when you talk to Joe Public about “flash” on a phone ? Perhaps the little widget next to the camera lens ?
Second: the market. The market is not geeks who produce lovingly crafted stuff for obscure, half baked and buggy web sites like MOSH. The market is, yes, Joe and Joanna Q. Public. They buy phones. They, if sufficiently motivated, will ask for phones with “flash” support, BECAUSE they’ve heard and seen that with such a phone they can do cool things.
That will get the market moving. Not stupid promotions (and US $10 million – come ON. Absolute peanuts – shows how motivated Adobe really is)
Does Adobe honestly believe that this totally artificial attempt to foist Flash, AIR *and* bloody Nokia on developers is going to result in anything other yet more obscure geekware designed to meet these ridiculous conditions to get funding rather than to build genuinely attractive products ?
Roll on Silverlight Mobile….. It is quite amazing that Adobe has succeeded in making *Microsoft* look like the agile, crafty underdog in this pond. I wonder if it will be possible to find anybody on the Adobe stand at Barcelona who can actually tie her/his own shoelaces. If so for heaven’s sake, put them in charge NOW!
Erick, if your industry expertise was a little deeper you would have also picked up the significance of other announcements such as Broadcomm’s VideoCore system-on-a-chip, a low-powered chipset for mobile devices, to accelerate Flash Video and other Flash content (3d gaming, hopefully). It may take an awfully long time for Adobe to get on mobile with Flash but its going to be a fundamental move starting from chipsets to device manufacturers and software vendors. E.g. ARM announced a significant partnership last year.
I’m a Flash (Lite) developer (and passionate about Flash!) who just spent 2 days at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Amazing how many people (at Erickson, LG, Samsung, etc.) actually pointed to a camera flash (confirming David’s comment about the name), when I asked them about the Flash possibilities of their devices/software …
They really didn’t know what Flas is!
One reason isn’t on the iphone, VOIP.
Imagine going to a web page and using voip on wifi ( apple and at&t no like-y )