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Adobe to build Flash player for the iPhone

By Damian Koh
Mar 19, 2008

It seems like the iPhone will get its own Flash player after all.

According to a The Wall Street Journal report, Adobe president and chief executive officer Shantanu Narayen told investors during a conference call Tuesday that the company is currently working on a media player for the iPhone.

He added that the iPhone software development kit (SDK) will give Adobe the necessary tools to develop a Flash player for the Phone. This will subsequently be available on the iTunes online store.

Apple announced the iPhone SDK with much fanfare earlier this month. The software, which had over 100,000 downloads in the first four days since its launch on March 6, will allow third-party developers to create applications that can run directly on the iPhone and the iPod touch.

"We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone," Narayen told WSJ.

This update comes after Steve Jobs' remark at a shareholders meeting on March 4, saying that the the PC version of Flash "performs too slow to be useful", and that Flash Lite "is not capable of being used with the Web", reported CNN Money, signaling the possibility of a product that straddles both mediums.

Microsoft licenses Adobe Flash Lite

Microsoft, on the other hand, has announced a licensing agreement on Monday for the Flash Lite 3.x plug-in on Internet Explorer Mobile.

According to the press release, over 500 million devices have been shipped with Flash Lite. Some of the devices that will run the latest 3.x version include the Nokia N95, N96, Sony Ericsson C- and G-series, NTT DoCoMo's 905i series and the Sony Mylo.

It wasn't stated when the plug-in would be available, which raises another important question: What happens then to Silverlight?

Microsoft has already expressed commitment to develop a mobile version of Silverlight to run on Windows Mobile and also on Nokia's Series60 platform. The latter is based on the Symbian OS.

"Silverlight, which has been under development for at least two years, is a player that can display Web applications on both Windows and Mac in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. The download of the player will be less than 2 megabytes," wrote Martin LaMonica for CNET News.com recently.

A version of Silverlight for Windows Mobile is expected to be available later this year.

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» Adobe: No Flash on the iPhone yet  20/03/2008
 

 

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