Adobe Turns Off iPhone Flash Development


For those of you who are or work with Flash designers, any hopes that Flash will appear on a future version of the iPhone have been all but dashed today. According to Network World, Adobe is halting development of a Flash-to-iPhone software tool, which was introduced with its Creative Suite 5 last week.

A few weeks ago, Adobe Systems was promoting its CS5 technology for building Flash applications that run on the iPhone.  But then Jobs struck back. He just doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone since it “performs too slow” and as always, Jobs will do whatever it takes to get his way.

Last week, Apple introduced an iPhone OS developer agreement, which prohibits developers to use third-party app compilers, including Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone tool. Lo-and-behold, Adobe comes out with an announcement that it will stop work on its efforts to bring Flash to the iPhone.

Flash isn’t lost in the mobile marketing space, though. Adobe is working closely with Google to bring Flash Player and Adobe Air to Android-based smartphones such as the Motorola Droid, Nexus One, HTC Incredible, and Sprint Evo and even upcoming non-Apple tablets.

Of course, with HTML5, you can do many of the same things that Flash can. Will the lack of Flash on the iPhone hinder your mobile marketing plans, or do you think Jobs is making the right move?