Last year, Adobe announced it would no longer develop mobile Flash. It now appears Adobe will ensure you are not able to install Flash on new Android devices and they’ve set a date. From Adobe’s Blog:

Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed. Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th.

And to think that, at one time, there were mobile hardware makers using Flash support as a selling point.

From Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash piece posted April, 2010:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

[…]

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

It appears Adobe has finally realized what Apple was saying all along, and I am happy to see them creating tools to aid in creating great HTML5 content.

According to ZDNet, Adobe will cease development of mobile Flash and focus their resources on HTML5. The following was leaked to ZDNet by sources close to Adobe:

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.

Considering Adobe demoed Wallaby—their tool to convert Flash to HTML5—last October, I think it was apparent to some on the inside that Flash’s days are numbered. Killing off mobile Flash is just the first step towards ending Flash as a browser plugin, while moving to support native apps and HTML5.

Update: Adobe has officially announced the end of mobile Flash on their blog.

Wondering when Adobe Flash will support WebM, Google’s royalty-free, open video compression format? According to Adobe, WebM support is “not very high” on the priority list. From Phoronix:

Adobe’s MAX 2011 conference took place last week in Los Angeles. During a Q&A session, WebM support in Flash was talked about. After Adobe was questioned about the WebM support, the response was, “Yes, on the priority list it’s not very high because we don’t have a lot of customers or real customers who want to do production with WebM. The problem on the production side is that encoding WebM is simply too slow, it’s not real time. And it’s not JDI too (just do it). Yes, it’s a lot of work for us.”