Microsoft confirms that no Flash is coming for its handsets

Apr 3, 2015 05:36 GMT  ·  By

Windows 10 will bring significant improvements to both PCs and smartphones, but as we told you a few weeks ago, there are very slight chances to see Adobe's Flash Player supported in the upcoming operating system for phones.

Microsoft has confirmed our initial report in a statement today, pointing out that Flash on Windows Phone (or Windows 10 for phones) is not possible, not because they wouldn't want to support it, but because “Adobe is no longer developing Flash for mobile.”

The Internet Explorer team has released this statement in a Twitter chat earlier today, pointing out that Spartan, the new browser that will be available across all devices powered by Windows 10, will come with a wide array of features on phones, including UI changes that could improve usability on portable devices.

In the last few weeks, screenshots that have reached the web via unofficial channels have revealed that, in Spartan for phones, Microsoft might actually put the address bar at the top of the screen, probably in an attempt to offer an experience that's similar to the one on PCs.

Users, however, want the address bar at the bottom of the screen for a more familiar layout, but Redmond says that what we're seeing right now is just an early UI and feedback could change everything before the final version of the operating system comes out.

“The designs for the phone aren't final yet, but know that we see EVERY bit of feedback on this very hot topic,” the IE team said.

Flash on mobile devices

Getting back to Flash support for mobile devices, Microsoft does nothing more than to follow the same direction as other large companies out there that were building phones without such capabilities did.

Apple is the one firm that has always opposed to bringing Flash on mobile phones, while others, such as BlackBerry, actually implemented support for Adobe's runtime environment in OS 10. And yet, due to stability, performance, battery, and security issues, the majority of vendors actually dropped Flash support, and living proof is BlackBerry, which removed it in OS 10.3.1.

With Adobe no longer supporting Flash for mobile, it's pretty clear that this technology is dead on phones, so Microsoft doesn't have too many options this time. On the desktop, however, Flash will continue to exist in Windows 10.