The following announcement was sent to Adobe’s internal developer mailing list and was confirmed by ZDNet earlier this evening:
Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.
This latest move for Adobe is being seen as the watershed moment for the transition away from Flash for the delivery of media like video on mobile devices to rapidly developing standards such as HTML5 and its related protocols for the delivery of media and content on mobile devices.
Adobe famously dueled with Apple on the merits of Flash on mobile for the better part of three years by developing workarounds in its Creative Suite toolset to deliver Flash content on Apple devices, with the latest development being Flash Media Server, which was designed to deliver the benefits of Flash content without the disadvantages of reduced device battery life and performance before today’s leaked announcement which is expected to be confirmed tomorrow morning via press release.
With development ending on Flash for mobile, Adobe will move to its AIR development platform with the combination of HTML5 to develop the same or better content delivery experiences without the disadvantages present in Flash, disadvantages which led to the death of the stillborn smartbook platform due to the excessive requirements of Flash as well as being a major contributor to the inconsistent performance of web browsers on tablets and smartphones.
Update: Adobe has confirmed the move to HTML 5 as well as the elimination of 750 jobs from its workforce.
