Adobe discontinues Flash for mobile devices

The restructure, which will cost Adobe up to $94million, will see the company shift its focus on HTML5 technologies and its Adobe AIR software. Danny Winokur, Adobe's vice president of interactive development, said: "Over the past two years, we've delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices. However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this and will continue our work with key players in the HTML5 community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers." According to Winokur, the company will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations, 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 licencees to continue working on and release their own implementations." The move is seen by many as a response to Steve Jobs' refusal to use the technology in Apple's iPhones and iPads. The Apple co founder once wrote said: "Flash was created during the pc era - for pcs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond pcs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards - all areas where Flash falls short."