Flash Player 11.1 and AIR 3.1 Releases Mark the End of The Mobile Flash Era

We knew mobile Flash's end would come, but it didn't seem that it would come so soon. Adobe has now released Flash Player 11.1 and AIR 3.1. They're minor updates and there's not much to say about them in particular, what is notable though is that this is the very last Flash Player for mobile.

"As we communicated yesterday, we see a very bright future for both Flash and HTML5," Adobe wrote in the launch announcement.  

"We’re committed to helping Flash developers deliver stunning, immersive experiences across devices — helping you reach over a billion people across desktop browsers and create Flash-based apps to reach over 350 million smartphones and tablets this year alone," it continued.

You'll notice that nowhere in there does it say anything about the death of mobile Flash, just about the great future the desktop Flash and Flash in mobile apps share.

"Now that we are focusing on enabling Flash-based content via apps on mobile devices, this release will be the last version of the browser plug-in for mobile devices. We’ll continue to provide bug fixes and security updates for the mobile browser plug-in," Adobe explained.

What this means is that there will be no Adobe Flash Player 11.2 for mobile devices and certainly no Adobe Flash Player 12.

But huge bugs and security flaws will be fixed for the devices the plugin is available on, at least for the time being.

Ironically, the only notable updates in the latest updates to Flash and AIR are for mobile devices, however, both target AIR apps rather than the Flash browser plugin.

On the one hand AIR apps now support native extensions for iOS5 as well, enabling app makers to access more native capabilities on the platform. The other notable update is support for native text input boxes on Android.