Adobe stops development on Flash Player for mobile browsers, focuses on HTML5

In a move that is surely going to take Flash fanatics by surprise, Adobe will be halting development on Flash Player for mobile browsers. This information comes courtesy of ZDNet who got their hands on an upcoming announcement from Adobe that details this move.

The yet-to-be-official announcement from Adobe is as follows.

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

So all the mobile devices that currently support Android will continue to run it, with occasional bug fixes coming along the way but if you were hoping for further improvement and optimization then you’re out of luck. The current Flash Player works best only on high-end hardware like the Galaxy S II that have the horsepower to run intensive content such as 1080p videos whereas others still struggle. And they got nowhere close to making it NOT guzzle battery when it’s doing those things. And now with the development stopped the wonderful Flash experience that Adobe promised on mobile will remain a pipe dream.

It seems Apple and Microsoft were right in placing their bets on HTML5 instead of Flash. And it seems even Adobe, the owners of Flash have realized this now. This is good news because now the growth of HTML5 will be even faster and in the end that will be beneficial for everyone.

Source