Adobe planning Flash for iPhone

Adobe planning Flash for iPhone

Despite Apple CEO Steve Jobs' assertion that Adobe Flash "won't be coming to the iPhone anytime soon" and a series of technical hurdles to implementation, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen told investors Adobe will develop Flash for the iPhone now that an official SDK (software development kit) is available.

Computerworld quotes Narayen: "We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone. We have evaluated [the software developer tools] and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves."

Apple's developer agreement includes the following stipulation, which could mitigate Adobe's plans:

"An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise."

Flash performance and usage is abysmal on current mobile devices that support playback. Mobile device processors ? including the iPhone's ? simply aren?t fast enough to handle most Flash-laden sites. Flash Lite, the scaled down standard designed specifically for mobile devices, is even too much for most devices, and isn't widely used.

UPDATE: Adobe has now clarified its position in a statement obtained by our sister site News.com:

"Adobe has evaluated the iPhone SDK and can now start to develop a way to bring Flash Player to the iPhone. However, to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone Web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it."

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