Adobe will no longer develop its Flash Player plug-in for mobile devices following the release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook, the company said Nov. 9.
In a blog posting on the company’s Web site, Adobe VP and general manager, Interactive Development Danny Winokur said the company’s work in the future with Flash for mobile devices will focus on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for major app stores.
According to the posting, the move will allow Adobe to increase investment in HTML5. The company will continue Flash innovation in areas such as gaming and premium video. In the posting Winokur said the Flash Player 11 for PC browsers has added a variety of new features for “console-quality gaming and premium HD video with content protection.”
“Flash developers can take advantage of these features, and all that our Flash tooling has to offer, 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,” he said in the posting.
In a related development, a small group of web and mobile developers last week launched the “Occupy Flash” campaign calling for computer users to uninstall the Flash Player from their desktop browsers. According to the campaign’s Web site, uninstalling the Flash Player is important — despite HTML5 “clearly” winning “the fight for the future of web browsing — because “as long as software is installed on machines, there will be a contingent of decision makers who mandate its use….”
Adobe announced Nov. 8 that it was cutting 750 positions from its U.S. and European workforce.
