Adobe Flash Coming Soon To Apple iPhones? (ADBE, AAPL)
Good news, if true. While the iPhone's Safari Web browser is one of its best features, its lack of Flash support means many features simply don't work. A plug-in for the iPhone means Flash files -- games, site navigation, videos, and yes, even advertisements -- should load the same on the iPhone as they do on a computer.
So what took so long? Not technology -- Apple's Mac OS X has supported Flash for years, and Adobe boasted yesterday that more than 450 million Flash-capable cellphones have shipped since the company started making its mobile version.
The real delay: Business negotiations. While Adobe gives away its Flash plugin for free on computers, it's tried to get mobile phone manufacturers and/or carriers to pay a license fee for each phone its software is installed on.
That may have helped Adobe generate some extra revenue over the years -- we've heard the company charges a license fee as much as $1 per phone -- but it has limited its market share. The free Flash plug-in is installed on some 99% of computers, but mobile research firm M:Metrics says just 14% of U.S. phones are Flash-capable.
See Also:
Five iPhone Apps We Can't Wait To Install
Two Must-Dos For Adobe's New CEO
How Palm Can Beat Apple's iPhone: The Flash Phone
Flash may be a sweet, streamlined speed demon on Windows for all I know, but it is such a processor pig under OS X on both PPC and x86 chips, I can't imagine it would be any better under OS X on the ARM platform.
Now, I wouldn't be surprised to see a Flash player as one of the first native iPhone apps, but I think it will come from Adobe, and if they want $1 for each iPhone, more power to them. Let them sell the Flash player app through iTunes for $2 a pop.
I would be very surprised, however, to see Apple release any Flash capability as part of the core iPhone software unless Adobe can radically improve its performance and optimization.
http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/news_flash_no_flash
They'd load the same (or same-ish, since this would most likely be Flash Lite and not the full Flash 9 behemoth) but most current games designed for the desktop would be unplayable given the iPhone's touch interface.
http://fe101.live.ap.sp1.yahoo.com/
It would be nice to be able to surf this live content from the iPhone/Touch and AppleTV Take 2.
Considering that Google just said at the Mobile World Congress that the iPhone is generating 50x as much traffic as any other mobile device, I would suggest to you gentlemen that it is Adobe that really needs Flash on the iPhone, not Apple.
http://www.iweatherman.com
Are you seriously questioning the value of broadening the material viewable by the iPhone? Although far from perfect, Flash is THE most commonly used tool for providing interactive content and video. As a web developer it is crucial that your content is viewable by the largest number of computers possible. Using Flash provides assurance that your website will be viewable regardless of platform.
Seems silly to even debate this...
It's the same reason that I have no interest in 3G for the iPhone until someone can develop a single integrated 3G chipset, which today does not yet exist, though I'm quite sure Broadcomm and others are working very diligently to get just such a low-power, integrated chipset into the iPhone this year.
As of yet, Adobe has shown no interest in streamlining Flash to run more efficiently even on the PPC and x86 platforms, much less ARM. If and when that happens, I'll welcome it, and so (perhaps) will Apple. Until then, it's not worth the trade-off.