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Adobe: iPhone will support Flash eventually

By Reuters and Barry Collins

Posted on 15 Feb 2010 at 08:36

Adobe says it believes Apple will cave to public pressure and one day support Flash on the iPhone.

The software firm made the claim as it announced that it was bringing its Air platform to mobile phones, which allows developers to create Flash applications that can be delivered through a variety of mobile app stores.

Adobe has been racing to keep pace with the proliferation of smartphones, netbooks and now tablet PCs, and has built an alliance of industry leaders to work on making web browsing consistent across devices.

The environment has been further complicated by players such as Apple, Nokia and Vodafone rolling out their own application stores, opening up proprietary distribution channels that compete with simply browsing the web.

I suspect that what will happen is that as we have more devices in the market... Apple will have more market pressure to include Flash on the iPhone

David Wadhwani, who runs Adobe's Platform business, says Adobe will continue to support both ways of distributing Flash. It has already published tools that offer developers a way to convert Flash applications into ones that work on the iPhone.

"We personally believe very strongly that open distribution will be the model that will prevail, but we're agnostic," he said. "Ultimately, the consumer will decide."

Adapting power-hungry video applications that work well on everything from desktop PCs to mobile devices has posed a major challenge. Running such applications can also quickly drain batteries.

Apple has until now rejected Flash on these grounds, and has also claimed that Flash is "buggy," blaming it for instances of Macs crashing.

"We reject the accusation that Flash is buggy," said Wadhwani, and pointed to the fact that Apple makes money when consumers buy through the App Store, but not when they access content via their web browser.

"Apple would like to move rich content off the web and into its App Store, where it can more readily monetise it," he added.

"I suspect that what will happen is that as we have more devices in the market... Apple will have more market pressure to include Flash on the iPhone," he said.

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User comments

Not going happen, Apple Protecting Revenues

Why would Apple let flash onto the iPhone/iPad when that would pose a big threat to the revenue gained from all the games that they sell on the app store.

By Tallfish1 on 15 Feb 2010

Indeed, Apple would never do something that would be beneficial to their customers (like making Flash and so Flash sites and apps available) when they could instead make money at the expense of consumer requested features.

By skarlock on 15 Feb 2010

Lack of Flash support is holding the iPhone back

Apple are looking at short-term gain, rather than long-term adoption.

By cheysuli on 15 Feb 2010

Flash isn't buggy?

If it isn't buggy, why do security experts seem to release new warnings on a monthly basis for users to disable Flash on Windows and Mac computers, because of serious security bugs in Flash? :-S

Flash seems to be the most attractive platform for malware writers at the moment, because it is cross platform.

"We personally believe very strongly that open distribution will be the model that will prevail, but we're agnostic,"

ROFL, an open distribution system, using Adobe's proprietary Flash system? :-D Do these people even think, before opening their mouths?

Apart from Flash games, very few websites really need Flash on them. Most do, because they are lazy. Embedded video doesn't need Flash, never has, but it was an easy way to embed video, until HTML 5.

Menus: Most of the "Flash" menus could be implemented in CSS or JavaScript, requiring no additional plugins.

Adverts: Let's not even go there. They are the bane of Internet users and more of a reason to block Flash than not.

I used to run adblockers, but these days, I generally block Flash on my desktop, but allow the ad domains to serve me up JPG ads.

If the ad agency / website / company advertising are so stupid as to try and annoy me, that is their loss.

Oh, I *did* go there. :-D

By big_D on 15 Feb 2010

I am agnostic about flash. As a developer I won't touch it because it is not open-source and requires expensive tools. As a consumer it _does_ provide a rich user experience which so far has not been matched by CSS and Javascript. scribd.com is an example of the sort of rich internet application that wouldn't really be possible without Flash. I applaud the fact that it empowers graphics designers to stretch their boundaries. I like the fact that it is cross-platform. The security issue would be true of any technology that genuinely competes in this space. HTML5 so far does not.

By c6ten on 15 Feb 2010

Erm, scribd.com can easily be done in CSS and Javascript. Looks like a bunch of PDFs served-up by Flash, bit of an over-kill. Like most things that use Flash for a website.

By treadmill on 15 Feb 2010

That doesn't make sense. If it were possible to do that, surely scribd would have done so? Perhaps you are not a developer and therefore don't understand the requirements of cross-platform publishing.

By c6ten on 15 Feb 2010

most of scribd is in JavaScript and CSS, only the articles themselves are displayed in Flash.

There is no reason why they have to be.

By big_D on 16 Feb 2010

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