Not so Flash for iPhone

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 2 Feb 2009 at 10:35

Adobe has confirmed that it's working with Apple to get a version of Flash on the iPhone, but that it's not plain sailing.

Speaking to Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen acknowledged that even the combined powers of Adobe and Apple were struggling to make headway.

"It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating," he says. "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."

Jobs has been openly sceptical about Flash on the iPhone, displaying little patience for the full-fat version which he claimed performed "too slow to be useful" back in March and totally dismissive of Flash Lite, which is "not capable of being used with the web."

That's left engineers at Adobe looking to create a third version of the ubiquitous web app to suit the iPhone's specific needs.

Narayen has previously called for Apple's help in developing the iPhone version, and his comments seem to suggest the company has responded, though the level of collaboration remains unknown.