Adobe: Mobile Flash to Get Accelerometer, Multi-touch Support Early Next Year
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch said at a company event for analysts today that a full featured version of Flash for mobile phones will be available in beta by the end of this year and by early next year the technology will be making use of multi-touch and accelerometer features on smart phones.
Ted Patrick, Adobe's Senior Manager of Developer Communities, put it like this: "I think we will see Flash on different devices support the soul of the device in capabilities and APIs" - including GPS. That's an exciting trajectory and more than we've heard before. Full Flash on phones by the end of this year is more or less on schedule, but the integration of these physical features certainly revs up the imagination.
The company's presentations were reported live on Twitter by multiple analysts present; the multi-touch and accelerometer integration forecast was first tweeted by Redmonk's James Governor and then quickly passed around between attendees.
"As Apple has shown," Governor told us by phone, "the User Experience elements are really important - it's not just how you draw screens. Adobe has understood this and will be offering APIs accordingly. What's most important is that they support a new interaction model because that's what developers want. Augmented reality apps, being more gestural about how you interact with applications - that's a big deal."
Governor, whose analyst firm counts Adobe among its clients, says that things will get really interesting when the Flash developer tool Flash Builder (formerly known as Flex Builder) integrates mobile and mobile features like accelerometer and multi-touch into its development environment. That's not currently on the public road map, but seems like the next logical step. "There's all these really cool phones beyond the iPhone, like Nokia phones, that have APIs for things like accelerometers, but the functionality hasn't been taken advantage of," Governor said. "If Adobe can simplify access to this functionality for new interaction models then it can, through tools, democratize sophisticated development on these platforms."
We've had only initial contact about this with Adobe at press time but will update coverage if we get more information.
While we tend to focus here on non-gaming mobile apps, it's not hard to see that multi-touch, accelerometer and GPS use by Flash apps will probably have the biggest impact on games.
The mobile Flash demonstrations shown today by Adobe were all on Android devices, still no world on Flash for the iPhone. ("It's up to Apple," was the line again today.) A bevy of beautiful, touchable, turnable, location-aware Flash apps on Android could create a pretty compelling competitor to the contents of the iPhone app store.
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Great news, just a minor correction "...the Flash developer tool Flash Builder (formerly known as Flex) integrates mobile and mobile features like accelerometer and multi-touch into its development environment."
The IDE was formerly known as Flex Builder (Flex still exists as the name of the framework).
Thanks Peter, fixed that.
Flash on Iphone = never. 90% of their app value would go up in smoke. Apple is profiting from the closed system as long as they can and then will recede again as they like to make the same mistake over and over again...
Apple could profit from Flash if they siphoned Flash apps through the app store. And Flash developers would be glad to post their apps on the store as well. There would still be apps in the browser but it's inconvenient to open a browser to see a weather app, calculator app, etc.
You can make money anywhere. To figure out what people will pay for use the, monetary cost vs personal cost (personal cost = anything personal energy spent, time, effort, stress, etc) this algorithm TM just now by me. ;)
Multi touch is cool, but access to device features (GPS, Accelerometer etc.) has been possible since 2006 (at least on Symbian). Why to wait 3 years to see that?
http://kunerilite.net/
http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/S60_Platform_Services
Would be cool if flash supported Dell Latitude XT touchscreen too! :)
Good for mobile, but quite late. If you frame the redmonk's quote right, you notice the idea of adobe flash trying to become for mobile what java tried for desktop. But just like with html 5's video tag, they will be marginalized in this space. Apple, Google and MSFT have a lot to lose here, and will fight. And before flash, all mobile browsers will have the same low-level APIs (e.g. PhoneGap).
Flash basic advance is the multi-platform support on PC this is the three main OS (Win, Mac, Linux) on mobile it could be IPhone, Symbian, Android, and Windows Mobile.
I think Flash could be the most powerful cross-platform ever, we need just ideas that could benefit from technology.
Some other issues:
Kunerilite
I tried kunerilite GPS plugin for Flash, but it works only on Nokia Symbian 3rd and 5th ed, and hard to implement complex approaches and applications due the licencing issues.
IPhone + Flash
IPhone and Apple has a walled garden business model, and it would be very nice if IPhone could run Flash, even for us developers, but I don not think it would happen. However I hope that it would be a surprise for everyone.
YAA its really a new concept for me and its somewhat late to me to reach.Anyways this really a cool application and I appreciate your work lol.Thanks.
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