The news was first leaked by Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch at an analyst event yesterday, according to a story on the
ReadWriteWeb website. The "full-featured version of Flash for mobile phones" mentioned in the story appears to be the same
Flash Player 10 that Adobe revealed last month. The software will be available in beta by the end of this year, with smartphones incorporating the technology early next year, according to author Marshall Kirkpatrick.
Bits and pieces of Kevin Lynch's presentation were spilled over Twitter, with Redmonk's James Governor, whose firm consults with Adobe,
tweeting, "[Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch] says beta for mobile Flash, unmodified, by end of 09, for embedding in early '10 multitouch, accelerometer." Ted Patrick, Adobe's senior manager of Developer Communities, chimed in with his own, more grammatical tweet,
writing, "I think we will see Flash on different devices support the soul of the device in capabilities and apis (multitouch/accel/gps/etc)."
Kirkpatrick writes that he later spoke with Governor, and quoted him as saying that the technology will "really get interesting" when Flash Builder (previously called Flex Builder) integrates mobile features like accelerometer and multi-touch into its development environment. Adobe has not publicly announced such a move, but Governor seemed to think it was a logical development, saying, "If Adobe can simplify access to this functionality for new interaction models then it can, through tools, democratize sophisticated development on these platforms."
As indicated in our
previous coverage, Adobe revealed last month that ARM, Broadcom, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments all have the Flash Player 10 code and are optimizing it for their processors and platforms. Adobe also suggested that the technology was dependent in part on the continuing success of its
Open Screen Project, announced last year with a charter to deliver a consistent runtime environment across multiple devices using Flash.
Apple and RIM bide their timeAccording to Kirkpatrick, Adobe CTO Lynch used only Android phones for his demo, although Adobe has stated that Windows Mobile phones, Nokia's Symbian, and Palm's Pre will also be supported by Flash 10. RIM's Blackberry and Apple's iPhone were not on the list, and according to Kirkpatrick, Adobe executives indicated that at least with the iPhone, that decision was still "up to Apple."
Meanwhile
DigitalBeat's Anthony Ha received a confirmation from Adobe about the story, reiterating the same list of supported platforms mentioned above, and confirming that Flash Player 10 would include "multi-touch (to allow users to easily interact with dynamic content) and accelerometer support (to understand the orientation of the device)."
Ha went on to speculate that the technology could help shift the balance of power away from the iPhone's native app approach to a web-based paradigm, similar to the one being espoused by Google for Chrome OS. If a Flash app on a website knows how to interact with your smartphone's accelerometers and multi-touch capability, then users may not need to spend so much money at the Apple's App Store, suggests Ha. No wonder, then, that Apple, which still offers the only true multi-touch phones around, has been cool to Flash.
Flash LiteAdobe's Flash 10 for mobile devices will reportedly 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.
Adobe Mobile Packager
(Click to enlarge)According to Adobe, packaged applications are distributable in the Windows Mobile .CAB file format and, once installed, appear in a device's standard Programs menu. If the Flash Lite player component is not already present on a device, it downloads swiftly, thanks to a size of less than 400K, the company adds.
AvailabilityThe
ReadWriteWeb story on Flash Player 10 may be found
here, and
DigitalBeat's confirmation story should be
here.
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