FLASH, Y U NO MOBILE?

How am I supposed to play ByteJacker on my phone now? HOW?!

E-mails sent to Adobe partners suggest that they are axing further development of Flash for mobile platforms.  They will continue to support the current versions of mobile Flash with critical patches and security updates, but don’t expect much besides that.  So is Adobe giving up on mobile devices all together?  Not exactly.

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores.

So why is Adobe abandoning their mobile push with flagship rich media application?  Adobe didn’t really say, so all we can really do is speculate…  So here we go.

Adobe recently let go of 750 employees in North America and Europe as part of a major restructure.  Possibly the loss of this labor makes it difficult for Adobe to continue their development of mobile Flash.  Adobe mentioned pushing developers toward Adobe AIR.  If developers package their apps with Adobe AIR, this should enable them to package the same app for multiple platforms with minimal trouble.  Apple will never allow Flash on any iOS device, so developing with AIR in mind would be the smarter choice.

I have to say that while mobile Flash wasn’t perfect, it was nice to be able to browse a web page and play a video without having to open that video in a special app on my phone.  I was hoping that over time they would fix the resource and power issues, but apparently Adobe doesn’t think it’s worth it.  Adobe has yet to confirm this directly, so this e-mail possibly went out by accident?  Probably not.

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]

 

Jarret Redding
Jarret Redding
Jarret Redding

Executive Director

Jarret is Executive Director as well as one of the founding members of Mash Those Buttons. He plays all types of games, but tends to lean more toward FPS, Stealth, and Combat games.

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