Adobe on Tuesday confirmed that it will no longer develop Flash for mobile devices after its next release.
"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," the company said in a blog post. "We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook."
The company will, however, continue to provide "critical bug fixes and security updates" for existing devices running the software. Those licensing the source code can also still work on and release their own implementations. Going forward, Adobe's focus will be on HTML5, which the company said "is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively, [making it] the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms."
The switch, Adobe said, "will allow us to increase investment in HTML5 and innovate with Flash where it can have most impact for the industry, including advanced gaming and premium video."
Last month, Adobe released Flash Player 11 and AIR 3, which included hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics rendering via a technology known as Stage 3D.
Adobe said today that work on Flash Player 12 is already underway. "We will continue to leverage our experience with Flash to accelerate our work with the W3C and WebKit to bring similar capabilities to HTML5 as quickly as possible, just as we have done with CSS Shaders," Adobe said. "And, we will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 as the standards evolve so developers can confidently invest knowing their skills will continue to be leveraged."
News of the move was first reported by ZDNet.
As the news made the rounds this morning, many have joked that Steve Jobs has apparently had the last laugh. Apple and Adobe have had their differences over the years, but their battle made headlines last year when Jobs posted a note on the Apple Web site in April that said the Flash technology was closed, unstable, and antiquated. "We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it," Jobs said at the time. Adobe responded by saying it would focus its efforts on Android.
More recently, Microsoft said the Metro-style version of Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 will not support plugins, meaning it will not support Adobe Flash. If you use the desktop version of IE10, however, plugin support will remain. Dean Hachamovitch, head of Microsoft's IE team, said in September that "the experience that plug-ins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 Web."
In response, Adobe highlighted its HTML5 and app projects.
"Adobe is about enabling content publishers and developers to deliver the richest experiences for their users, independent of technology, including HTML5 and Flash," Winokur said. "We are working closely with Microsoft, Google, Apple and others in the HTML community to drive innovation in HTML5, to make it as rich as possible for delivering world-class content on the open Web and through App Stores."
For more, see Adobe Flash Meets Its End and No Flash Forwarding to HTML5.