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Adobe added that early 2010 will bring Flash Player 10.1 betas for the Android and Symbian operating systems, and announced a "joint collaboration" with RIM that will bring Flash to BlackBerry devices. No timetable for the latter was announced, but it's a safe bet that the Flash Player will be on BlackBerry before it's on Apple's iPhone. Adobe's announcements made no mention of the iPhone, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly regards Flash with disfavor, considering that the multimedia framework overstresses the resources of mobile devices. (After its main Flash Player announcement, however, Adobe did cite one way Flash content will come to the iPhone -- see later in this story for details.)
According to Adobe, Flash Player 10.1 is a browser-based runtime that leverages the power of GPUs (graphics processing units), where present, providing "accelerated video and graphics while conserving battery life and minimizing resource utilization." New mobile-ready features are said to include support for multi-touch, mobile input models, accelerometers, and multiple screen orientations. Meanwhile, a new HTTP streaming format, code-named "Zeri," will employ open industry standards but will also allow content protection via Adobe Flash Access 2.0, the company adds.
Background
Apart from the forthcoming BlackBerry support, which was not previously disclosed, today's announcement merely adds incremental information to what Adobe has already discussed. A "desktop class" implementation of Flash Player 10 for mobile devices was first announced by ARM and Adobe last November, reportedly previewed behind closed doors at February's Mobile Word Congress in Spain, and promised in a June presentation to investors (below) in June by Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen (right).
In today's announcement, Adobe credited the development of Flash Player 10 to the continuing success of its Open Screen Project (OSP), announced last year with a charter to deliver a consistent runtime environment across multiple devices using Flash. Now, the company added, Google has joined the "close to 50" other industry player who are part of the project.
Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, stated, "We are excited to join Adobe and other industry leaders in the Open Screen Project. This initiative supports our common goal to move the Web forward as a platform and to spur innovation in the industry through technology such as Adobe Flash."
Stephanie Ferguson, general manager of product management for Microsoft, stated, "Adobe Flash technology provides a key experience on new Windows phones, enabling people to enjoy rich Flash-based games, videos and other interactive Web content on the go. We look forward to bringing in the new capabilities of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 to the Windows phone browser when it becomes available."
David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of Adobe's platform business unit, stated, "With Flash Player moving to new mobile platforms, users will be able to experience virtually all Flash technology based Web content and applications wherever they are. We are excited about the broad collaboration of close to 50 industry leaders in the Open Screen Project and the ongoing collaboration with 19 out of the top 20 handset manufacturers worldwide. It will be great to see first devices ship with full Flash Player in the first half of next year."
Flash Lite
Adobe's Flash 10 for mobile devices will apparently require an ARM11 or Cortex-A processor to run. However, Adobe also continues to offer Flash Lite, a mobile version of the Flash Player that's said to support .FLV video and .SWF vector graphics formats, and to run on hardware as modest as a 200MHz ARM9 processor. More than one billion devices now feature Flash Lite, according to Adobe, and plug-in versions have been licensed by companies including Microsoft, for the Internet Explorer Mobile 6 browser included in Windows Mobile 6.5, and by Opera Software, for Opera Mobile 9.5. (For more background on Flash Lite, see our earlier coverage, here.)
Adobe says the "redistributable player" version of Flash Lite announced in February lets Flash applications run standalone, rather than within a browser. Using the Adobe Mobile Packager tool (below), developers can package their .SWF files in a wrapper that includes an icon, metadata, and a version checker capable of downloading the latest Flash Lite player over the air.
iPhone support
As noted earlier in this story, Adobe has been unable to say when its Flash Player will become available on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices. "The Apple iPhone SDK license terms do notallow runtime interpreted code, so Adobe is not able to deliver FlashPlayer in Safari on the iPhone without support from Apple," Adobe stated today.
However, Adobe added, it will soon be possible to use a version of the company's Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool to create stand-alone iPhone/iPod Touch applications using Flash. Developers will be able to take the same code that would run in Adobe's AIR or Flash Player runtimes, and export it as a compiled iPhone app at the push of a button, the company promises.
Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer at Adobe, stated, "The engineering teams at Adobe have succeeded in bringing the latestFlash technology to the iPhone, opening the way for the Flash communityto deploy to the App Store. When Apple is ready to bring the full Webbrowsing experience to iPhone users, we'll be ready to bring FlashPlayer to Safari."
Availability
Beta versions of Flash Player 10 will be available for Windows Mobile devices and Windows desktop computers "later this year," according to Adobe. A public beta of Flash Professional CS5 will be available later this year, the company adds.
More information on the Flash platform may be found on the company's website, here.
