14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Adobe announced plans to put an end to the development of Flash Player for mobile devices, which was seen as a blow to many, but it seems that Flash developers who build apps targeting RIM's devices have nothing to fear of, at least for the time being.
Research In Motion remains committed to the platform, and will also help developers continue delivering applications of the PlayBook platform.
In a recent post on the company's developer blog, Alec Saunders, RIM’s VP of Developer Relations and Ecosystem Development, confirmed that the company will continue its work with Flash.
“What I would like our developer community to know is that RIM will continue to support developers who have built Adobe Flash-based apps on our platform,” he said.
“As an Adobe source code licensee, we have a lot of leverage through our own integration and support of Adobe Flash and will continue to provide our desktop-class Flash experience to our customers. On its end, Adobe will continue to support the current BlackBerry PlayBook tablet configuration.”
Adobe themselves said, in the official announcement regarding the killing of Flash for mobile, that they would provide support for the existing device configurations.
The company also mentioned that it would continue offering updates for Android and PlayBook devices, since Flash was already present on them.
However, it will not move forward with the Player for mobile browsers, but will focus on the development of HTML5 instead, since the technology is wide spread on mobile devices.
RIM as well plans on providing support for HTML5, and has already offered a series of details on the matter at the BlackBerry DevCon Americas conference last month. The company will adopt HTML5 on all of its mobile devices.
“We are excited to see Adobe focusing their efforts on HTML5, and on bringing their world class development and design expertise to HTML5 and mobile,” Saunders explained.
“As many of you noted, at BlackBerry DevCon Americas this year we strongly emphasized HTML5 development, and all of our platforms include best-in-breed HTML5 browsing capability, based on the WebKit engine. We believe that HTML5 is the future of mobile, and are delighted to be aligned with Adobe on this.”