14 DAY TRIAL // Some very interesting and somewhat unexpected news are coming from Adobe soon and it's not that they're firing even more people. Apparently, Adobe has given up on Flash on mobile, at least as a browser plugin, and is finally throwing in the towel.
It plans to discontinue any further development on the Flash Player for mobile devices except for security patches and critical bug fixes. There will also be no more releases on new platforms or devices.
Put simply, Flash on mobile phones or tablets is dead. At least that's the latest rumor, though it seems rather substantiated.
Adobe hasn't confirmed it, but the announcement is said to be coming soon. There were already some signs from the round of layoffs Adobe did announce, like its claim that it will focus more on HTML5 and on the desktop version of Flash.
Whatever the case, many are quick to brand it as a victory for Apple, which hardly seems the case.
After all, Apple chose not to include Flash in its mobile devices so it doesn't 'win' anything by Flash not being available on any mobile device, the lack or inclusion of Flash in a mobile device was hardly the deciding factor for almost anyone.
However, Apple's decision not to include Flash with its iPhone or iPad did have a big effect on mobile Flash and probably contributed greatly to its death.
But a much bigger contribution was the fact that Flash simply did not perform well on mobile devices, on any mobile devices, and Adobe was getting tired of throwing resources at something that may never have been fixed.
With HTML5 tools becoming a viable alternative, there was even less incentive for either developers or Adobe to invest in mobile Flash.
Of course, Apple's decision helped quite a lot with getting websites to adopt HTML5, if Flash would have been an option, even a poor one, many would have continued to use it rather than start something new.