14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Adobe announced officially the launch of its Adobe AIR 2.5 solution for various devices, including smartphones running under Google's Android operating system. Adobe AIR is a key element for the Adobe Flash Platform, and offers developers the possibility to package ActionScript apps into Android Packages (APK files) to be distributed to handsets.
With Android-based devices becoming increasingly popular on the market, and with the OS gaining more and more market share, the availability of Adobe AIR for Android can mean only good news for developers.
“The Android platform has gained amazing momentum with both developers and consumers; according to the latest Nielsen's survey, Android has recently become the top mobile operating system in the United States, ahead of the Apple iOS, which powers the iPhone,” Adobe notes on its website.
With the new release, AIR developers will have the possibility to submit their applications to the Android Market to be distributed to end-users.
“These users will be able to download AIR applications just like any native Android application. If the AIR runtime is not already installed on the Android device, users will automatically be directed to download the AIR runtime from the Android Market,” Adobe states.
According to the company, Adobe AIR would be pre-installed on various future Android-based mobile phones, offering users a better experience than before.
As for the new features that the AIR 2.5 mobile device profile comes with, we can count access to the device camera (for still image capture, video capture), microphone, and StageWebView.
These new features were added to the geo-location, accelerometer, multi-touch, and gestures APIs that it included in the package release for Apple's iPhone (AIR 2 for iOS).
“With these features, developers can use AIR to unlock the full potential of mobile devices,” the company announced, adding that it is working on expanding the reach of its solution across various mobile operating systems.
“It's our intention to enhance the previously released Packager for iPhone to reach feature parity with AIR 2.5 for Android,” Adobe noted.