Adobe to stop developing Flash for mobile browsers, increase HTML5 investment

The headlines say Steve Jobs has been vindicated, but the news is that Adobe is stopping development of Flash for mobile browsers, as ZDNet
first reported.

When Apple first announced that its iPhones, iPods and iPads would support HTML5, CSS and JavaScript instead of Flash, and Steve Jobs, on a media tour around the time of the iPad's introduction, tried to convince the Wall Street Journal and other outlets to use the H.264 video compression technology for their slideshows and videos instead of Flash, many guffawed. Flash was the dominant technology, and many thought Jobs disillusioned or self important (Gawker referred to the Steve Jobs "Reality Distortion Field") to think Apple could change this.

Tens of millions of iPads later, it officially has.

"HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively," Adobe shared in a statement today, adding that it's excited to be participating in the HTML5 community alongside Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM.

It continued:

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. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.

We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.

In an April 2010 open letter, Steve Jobs addressed critics who believed that banning Flash on Apple devices was a business decision made to protect the App Store, explaining that it was instead based on technology issues.

He went on to describe Flash as a closed system and lacking in reliability, security in performance — calling it the number one reason that Macs crash and a drainer of battery life, since it relies on software, instead of hardware, to decode video.

There was also the matter of Flash having been designed for PCs using mice, while Apple was innovating around touch. "Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover," wrote Jobs. "Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?"

Developers, he continued, were ultimately the biggest reason Apple stepped away from Flash. Adobe wanted developers to use Flash to create apps for Apple's devices, but Apple feared that inserting a third-party layer of software between the platform and its developers would result in sub-standard apps and leave Apple reliant on a third party to be quick about offering updates and enhancements.

Essentially, where Apple gets specific, Adobe was shooting to be broad.

"Flash is a cross platform development tool," wrote Jobs. "It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps."

It seems it still is.

Adobe announced that in addition to increasing its investment in HTML5, it will "innovate with Flash where we can have most impact for the industry, including advanced gaming and premium video. Flash Player 11 for PC browsers just introduced dozens of new features..."

Flash developers can take advantage of these features and more, it went on, to "reach more than a billion PCs through their browsers and to package native apps with AIR that run on hundreds of millions of mobile devices through all the popular app stores, including the iTunes App Store, Android Market, Amazon Appstore for Android and BlackBerry App World."