Adobe CEO says Flash apps coming to iPhone
Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen said the company intends to bring its Flash Player to Apple's iPhone.
During a conference call to announce Adobe's first-quarter earnings on Tuesday, Narayen said Adobe "will work with Apple" to make sure that Flash applications can run on the iPhone.
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen
(Credit: Adobe Systems)Seeking Alpha has a transcript of a conference call. Narayen's comment on the iPhone was in response to a question about getting Flash ported to other devices. (Microsoft announced earlier this week that it has licensed Flash Lite so that Flash applications can run on Windows Mobile devices.)
According to Seeking Alpha, here's what Narayen had to say:
Well, you really believe that Flash is synonymous with the Internet, and frankly, anybody who wants to browse the Web and experience the Web's glory really needs Flash support.
We were very excited about the announcement from Windows Mobile--adoption of Flash on their devices--and the fact that we've shipped 0.5 billion devices now, non-PC devices. So we are also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone, and we will work with Apple.
We've evaluated the SDK. We can now start to develop the Flash player ourselves, and we think it benefits our joint customers. So we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device.
Whether and how Flash applications would run on Apple's iPhone has been an open question since the device's launch. Narayen's comments indicate that Adobe will be able to create a version of Flash Lite for the iPhone by using the iPhone software developers kit (SDK) which was released earlier this month.
Adobe executives have made clear their desire to have Web applications written with Flash, which run on a range of the mobile phones, to make their way to the iPhone.
But Apple has thus far not allowed it, apparently over concerns that Flash applications run too slowly.
During Apple's shareholder meeting in March, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that full-blown Flash applications are "too slow to be useful" on the iPhone. He went on to say the mobile version of the Flash, called Flash Lite, is "not capable of being used with the Web."
Even after Jobs' comments about Flash and Flash Lite, Adobe touted the success of Flash Lite on other devices but still did not commit to bringing Flash applications to the iPhone.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
/P
Adobe makes no comment and is trying to make this available to the public that wants it (whether or not the publically actually wants this or would use it if available is a whole other story).
As I understand it, no application will be allowed on the iPhone unless Apple authorizes it and right now, Apple doesn't want Flash on their phone. How will Adobe convince Apple to change its mind and go back on their previous comments of Flash not being on the unit?
I expect there will be some money exchanged and magically Flash is now supported on the iPhone or something.
This resembles the whole 'we have no plans for a 3G iPhone' bit last year and yet multiple sources keep pointing to August as the release date for this very device.
I'm not really sure who to believe on this one, Adobe or Apple.
In the end, does it really *matter*? Flash on a phone, no matter how it is being used, is something I would turn off regardless as the primary use on websites is for ads and advertising disguised as gamin.
That's my .250 of a penny of thought. I'd try for the full two cents, but in today's market, I don't think I can afford it.
Apple wants to keep it's PDF Preview application.
Adobe wants Apple to license its Acrobat as the "pdf viewer" on the iPhone/iPod Touch along with Flash.
Apple has been screwed by Adobe since the Display Postcript fiasco when Jobs re-took the helm and integrated NeXT.
I fail to see why AAPL shareholders haven't booted Adobe from the Apple board. Apple is what gave Adobe life, and there seems no great love (lost) for the two.
And why isn't Adobe investigated on the monopoly it bargained into when it took in Macromedia?
And what about OpenType (Adobe and MSFT) putting screws to the millions of Apple designers...(Hey, you can buy all new typesets of what you already have!)
I bought a Macbook Pro 15" less than a year ago (2.4GHz Santa
Rosa) with 4GB of RAM and
the other day the CPU was doing 110% and running hot. I looked
at the processes
to see track down the culprit. It was Safari, one of the tabs I had
left open
the day before was Gizmodo. The Gizmodo webpage about the
iPhone was running
two concurrent flash video banners about a competing
Blackberry Pearl phone.
Once I killed the Gizmodo website my CPU returned to normal
and the laptop
cooled off. This recent trend I've noticed on my older Powerbook
G4 (1GHz)
with 1GB RAM was fine web browsing, till the advent of flash
video banners.
Then my web browsing experience and computer performance
went south.
I have nothing against Flash content as long as they give the
user control
over the web browsing experience back. On the iPhone this is
even more critical,
given that its not running an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz.
Solution for the iPhone would be:
1. Confirm download of Flash video (FLV) content. This saves
bandwidth and time
2. Ask the user if they want the Flash video to be played again.
Looping Flash videos kill performance.
My 2 cents
In that respect, it is somewhat of a three dimensional chess game unfolding, something I blogged about in, ?The Scorpion, the Frog and the iPhone SDK.?
Check it out if interested:
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/03/the-scorpion-th.html
Cheers,
Mark
- This should increase iPhone sales
- by digiguy23 March 19, 2008 4:52 PM PDT
- People will now be able to Broadcast on sites like Justin.TV and
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(7 Comments)Stickam using their iPhone. More sales for Apple in the long run.
Video conferencing. I hope Apple and Adobe work it out.