The ongoing debate over Flash on the iPhone appears to be over after Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen announced last week at the World Economic Forum that Adobe and Apple are working together in an effort to bring Flash to the iPhone.
"It's a hard technical challenge and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are cooperating to try and get it done as soon as possible," Narayen said in an interview with Bloomberg.
While Narayen didn't answer the question of whether Apple had strengthened its commitment to putting Flash on the iPhone he did point out that the ball was now in Adobe's court. "We have the developer kit and the onus is now on us," he said.
The debate has been long and tough. In March last year Narayen said that with or without Apple's blessing, Adobe planned to develop a Flash player for the iPhone/iPod touch platform. Unfortunately Apple CEO Steve Jobs had already made it clear the current Adobe offerings were not acceptable. Flash Lite, the version designed specifically for mobile devices, just wasn't good enough and Adobe's desktop product was just too slow on the iPhone. According to Jobs, what was needed was a "missing product in the middle."
Has Adobe been working on that product in the middle? In October 2008 Adobe Senior Director of Engineering Paul Betlem confirmed that a Flash player was in development for the iPhone, but pointed out that Adobe would still need approval from Apple to get it onto their products. Clearly, approval has now been granted.
During the Bloomberg interview, Narayen said that Adobe plans to have over a million devices shipped by the end of the year that have Flash and he's not just talking iPhone; the company is working on the Android platform, the Windows mobile and the Symbian platform.
As to when we'll see Flash on the iPhone, your guess is as good as ours. No time frame has been offered but given Narayen's comments last week, we hope to see it this year.
Watch the five minute interview below.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Considering Steve Jobs/Apple actually own Adobe, its still annoys me that it's taken this long.
Better Late than never..So at last some freshness to ugly situation of IT (crashes, false warning messages, security breaches...)
So what's changed? Flash on the Mac (and probably everywhere) has been a miserable resource hog. Fix that Adobe and then we'll see seems to be the deal. So, no change in Apples attitude and it's always been in Adobes court.
Personally I'm hoping it never shows up and I don't think Adobe can pull it off.
Oh please, it's about time. One lack of feature I dislike the most about the iPhone!
Brand new mobile phone , laptop , come with complete
accessories with one year international warranty.
Emaill address: applemac-inc@hotmail.com
HTC TOUCH PRO2..............$500USD
Sony Ericsson Idou Black Unlocked GSM..$550usd
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD Unlocked..$500usd
HTC Touch HD ..........$500usd
HTC Touch Pro ..........$400usd
HTC Touch Diamond ...$350usd
Samsung omnia i900.....$400usd
Apple iphone 3G 16gb........$300usd
Sony ericsson C905.........$500usd
Nokia n96 16gb...$500usd
Apple iphone 16gb..$350usd
Sony ericsson xperia x1..$400usd
Apple iphone 8gb.....$300usd
Nokia n95 8gb.......$300usd
Ps3 60gb.............$300usd
16GB APPLE IPHONE ITEM IN BOX:
iPhone
Stereo Headset
Dock
Dock Connector to USB Cable
USB Power Adapter
Documentation
Cleaning/polishing cloth
User guide
Travel Charger
Leather Case
We make shipment via Ups and Fedex shipping company 2days
deliver worldwide.
If you are interested in buying our product contact us via
Email address: applemac-inc@hotmail.com