14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe officials are becoming vocal on the discontinuation of Flash for mobile platforms with one lead developer admitting that it was all Apple’s fault. He also admits that HTML5 is proving to be the right choice for mobile web.
Mike Chambers, lead product manager for Flash, has made a blog entry which reveals that Apple is responsible for the decline of mobile Flash, or at least that the Cupertino giant kick-started the chain of events that led to its discontinuation.
“This one should be pretty apparent,” he wrote on his blog, “but given the fragmentation of the mobile market, and the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple's iOS) was not going to allow the Flash Player in the browser, the Flash Player was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity of the Flash Player on desktops…”
“Just to be very clear on this. No matter what we did, the Flash Player was not going to be available on Apple's iOS anytime in the foreseeable future,” he said.
Chambers also tells followers that Adobe’s decision was not an easy one.
However, like any company out there, they have to prioritize resources, and throwing money at mobile Flash was no longer feasible, he says:
“Considering how politically charged the issue has been, the decision to stop development of the Flash Player for Mobile Browsers was not an easy decision,” he writes “However, at the end of the day, there were a number of items that made it clear that putting resources towards its continued development would not be the best use of resources.”
Chambers downright admits Adobe’s defeat in the face of HTML5, the web standard promoted by Steve Jobs in his open letter titled “Thoughts on Flash”.
“On mobile devices HTML5 provides a similar level of ubiquity that the Flash Player provides on the desktop. It is the best technology for creating and deploying rich content to the browser across mobile platforms,” he says.
Steve Jobs’ material single-handedly killed Flash on mobile, but it took over a year and a half see the ‘fruits’ of his labor.