According to Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering at Google

Apr 28, 2010 08:38 GMT  ·  By

The next release of Google's Android operating system, dubbed Android 2.2 or Froyo, is expected to arrive on handsets later during the ongoing year, bringing along something that users have been long waiting for, namely full support for Adobe's Flash Player 10.1. There are no specific details available on when the next version of Android is actually be rolled-out, yet it is known that the Flash Player is expected to be released later during the ongoing quarter.

Flash for Android was showcased for the first time back in 2008 on the first handset powered by Google's mobile OS, the T-Mobile G1. Ever since, users have been eagerly waiting for full support for the technology to be included in the platform, as well as for the Flash Player to become available for mobile phones, and it seems that the next months should bring both of them into the mix. Adobe already confirmed plans to release Flash for handsets in the first half of 2010, while Google is expected to launch the next Android version shortly too.

The news on full support for Flash in Froyo comes from a recent interview with Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering at Google, published in an article on the New York Times. Among the other details Rubin unveiled, we can count the fact that Google is confident that Android's open nature will help it a lot on the market. The number of Android-based devices sold on the market is expected to surpass the number of BlackBerrys and iPhones, Rubin stated. Moreover, he also noted that developers enjoy great support from Google, and that third-party apps have the same advantages in the Android Market as the company's own solutions.

“We use the same tools we expect our third-party developers to,” Mr. Rubin said. “We have an SDK we give to developers. and when we write our Gmail app, we use the same SDK. A lot of guys have private APIs. We don’t. That’s on policy and on technology. If there’s a secret API to hook into billing system we open up that billing system to third parties. If there’s a secret API to allow application multitasking, we open it up. There are no secret APIs. That is important to highlight for Android sake. Open is open and we live by our own implementations.”