Flash Player 10 beta coming to most smartphones this fall
Back at GSMA 2009, Adobe Systems announced that it would bring Flash Player 10 to a number of smartphones in 2010, and it looks like the company is making good on its promise.
In a Q2 audio press release, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen confirmed that Adobe will release a beta version of Flash Player 10 in October for a number of smartphone browsers, including Windows Mobile, Google Android, Palm WebOS, and Symbian. In addition, Narayen said ARM, Nvidia, Broadcom, Intel, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm are currently optimizing the player for their products.
Obviously, this is great news for smartphone owners, but one platform noticeably missing from the list is the iPhone OS. This doesn't rule out Flash support on iPhones in the future, however. In the past, Adobe executives have stated that it's coming but that Apple is operating on its own schedule.
In CNET News' Marguerite Reardon's original report on Flash Player 10 in February, Anup Murarka, director of technology strategy and partner development for Adobe, said, "We would love to see it on the iPhone, too. But it's Apple's decision on when and how they support any new technology. So we will continue to work on it."
While iPhone users will have to wait (why do I imagine some people pointing at iPhone users and doing this?), as well as BlackBerry owners, others can get a sneak peek of what's to come in October in the video below, in which Adobe shows off Flash Player 10 on Google Android.
(Source: TMONews)
Bonnie Cha is a senior editor for CNET, covering smartphones and GPS. When she's not testing the latest gadgets, you can find her chasing after her crazy lab or surfing in the chilly waters of Northern California. E-mail Bonnie. 
but with youtube ,dailymotion, Tv.com and a host of others + itunes
I dont think it's as killer of a feature as everyone is making it out to be
plus flash = hog of CPU resources {it not even optimized for dual core Pcs/Macs }
No matter how much they optimize it they are still phones with tiny processesors and low memory
Imagine a pre running 5 web pages that use flash ads and video
battery will probably last 30 minutes and it'll probably run out of memory in the mean time and crash !
but overall other than HULU which I use on my Apple TV
I dont see that much use for flash
and I hope it dies and gets replaced with open source stuff like HTML 5 etc.
that closed proprietary bloatware has bugged me long enough on my Computer
I would rather not have it on a mobile device !
Movies and music I hardly ever stream anyway so that would not bother me.
Can't wait to get this on my Pre!
That's cute, you're worried about how many applications the Pre has when it's only been out on the market for ~2 weeks. Being that the Pre home-brew development community is already on fire and that the official SDK will see release by summer's end, the # apps the Pre has should be your last concern. How about running more than one app on the dumbest smart phone around (iPhone), that should be more of a concern for you. Knee-jerk replies coming from apple-fangirls in ...3...2...1...
By the time Flash final gets to the rest of the handsets, the iPhone will have about 80,000 apps and people will have other things to keep themselves occupied with. Yes, go run your Flash on a Pre and see your battery take a hit. I know you don't care because it's swappable. The iPhone doesn't have that option so it's better not to use Flash on the iPhone. I can live without it.
At the end - the 99% of the users will benefit and you, the apple boys will have to put up with this. One can only feel sorry for you...
That way you can ignore all the adverts that would take up processing power, but still get the games, chart and interactive content you want.
But almost everyone in the know can see that Apple don't want us iPhone users getting free games, music and movies from the web when we could be buying them from the app/itunes stores.
I would guess the 'to demanding' argument Apple used has been somewhat removed by the faster 'S' model. Flash on this would be a BIG insentive to upgrade, for me anyway.
One cannot argue with the trend that computing power is going mobile, this is just a step along the way to deliver the same user experience as on a computer.
Granted Apple has done a great job of controlling the keys to the kingdom through their app store, but content producers, carriers, developers and ultimately consumers want choices and need to leverage economies of scale. Apple dictates what it's customers can put on their devices by controlling the SDK/app store and maintaining explicit control over their platform. If MSFT did this, people would be screaming from the tops of buildings about their anti-competitive business practices. The only reason Apple gets a pass is because they have less market share and have convinced their customers that this explicit control is really "in their best interest". Enabling Flash across PC's and devices open these platforms up to over 1 million + developers to write once and deploy anywhere thereby bypassing the control that Apple has on it's platform. Again the fact that Apple is resistant to Flash has nothing to do with the technology and everything to do with Apple's revenue streams. Think about it, if Flash was so bad on devices do you think you would have companies like Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Erickson, etc. etc making *significant* investments in this platform? The reality is that Flash and RIA's in general pose a significant threat to OS vendors as it democratizes the platform.
Cody
Don't hold your breath, folks.
If they could write a Flash plugin for the Mac that didn't put my MacBook air into meltdown watching a youtube video then maybe Apple would have a little confidence that they could write a resource optimized player for the iphone. If I was Apple I would tell them to make it right on the Mac first and then we can talk about iPhone. If I were Adobe and looking at Html 5 / CSS and a more and more optimized video codecs for quicktime and other players I might take the hint to pony up and rewrite the plugin to avoid irrelevance on a growing platform that is influencing the hottest cell phone in ages.
AIR was designed with smart phones in mind. AIR comes with its own database, allows read / write access on the phone's file system (given permission, of course), can handle Javascript, HTML and, of course Flash.
After we get Flash on all the smart phone browsers, next comes AIR. Then it's develop once, deploy everywhere.
I used to be a "Developer" but mainly for enterprise Web apps. There's nothing inferior about apps done in the Net. They are fast, distributed and clean. But they can't do everything. Try playing "Super Monkey Ball" on the Web. Flash is kind of a middle ground being able to do some Rich Application Work while still being browser based.
The "real" reason Flash not coming to the iPhone any time soon is because it opposes Apples' controlled environment of App deployment through the App Store, not because the iPhone needs apps.
So the day would come when Flash comes to BlackBerry and iPhone, but that day will mark some changes from both companies. For now, we are still in the Commodore 64 vs Apple DOS vs PC-DOS vs CP/M era, smartphone-wise.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/video.html#video-and-audio-codecs-for-video-elements
Why does the iphone need flash with HTML 5 in place already ?
http://www.davidtucker.net/2009/06/19/an-honest-open-discussion-on-web-standards-and-html-5/
- by afox86 June 28, 2009 9:47 PM PDT
- i wanna try it
- Reply to this comment
-
(43 Comments)