Adobe developing a Flash Player for the iPhone

Adobe is developing a new version of its Flash Player runtime environment specially adapted to meet the requirements of the iPhone. Apple turned Adobe down two weeks ago, finding neither Flash Player 9 nor Flash Lite 3 worthy of gracing the iPhone; Steve Jobs had requested an intermediate stage between the desktop and mobile versions of the player.

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Adobe intends to develop a Flash Player on its own, using the recently published iPhone SDK. Adobe is doing this independently of Apple, so Flash Player would therefore not form part of the basic equipment of the smartphone, but would be sold via the iTunes online shop. This is the same route followed by Sun earlier with its Java runtime environment for the iPhone.

Flash Lite appears gradually to be succeeding on smartphones. According to the Wall Street Journal, 100 million smartphones with the light version of the runtime environment were manufactured in the first quarter of 2008 alone, and Windows mobile devices will shortly be added to the list. Microsoft, which offers Silverlight, a rival to Flash, also failed to reach agreement with Apple about licensing its player to the iPhone.

(trk)