Apple, Adobe Team To Add Flash To iPhone

By Ed Sutherland (7:24 am, Feb. 02, 2009)

Adobe is working with Apple to develop a version of Flash specifically for the iPhone, according to a report Monday. Adobe’s CEO said tailoring Flash for the touch-screen handset required Apple’s involvement.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen told Bloomberg while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Although 80 percent of handsets use Flash, in 2008 Apple CEO Steve Jobs dismissed the standard and light versions of Flash and said Adobe needed another version for the iPhone.

After initially responding a Flash version could be created using Apple’s existing development tools, Adobe backtracked, noting difficulties that “prevent third-party code from running in the devices’ built-in programs,” a report noted.

Posted by Ed Sutherland in News | Comment on this article

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Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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2 comments

    Why?

    The iPhone is the best chance we have of finally killing flash. Picture it… a world with far fewer annoying ads, lousy sites which you can’t direct link to, crappy quality video.

    By not having flash, the iPhone has forced sites like YouTube and iPlayer to come up with less annoying ways of delivering content.

    Bob, on February 2nd, 2009 at 9:55 am

    The people that think Flash is only used for goofy ads and crappy video quality need to reset their clocks about five years. There are a multitude of important sites that rely upon Flash to produce and deliver exceptionally compelling content – like the New York Times which carried fantastic and highly educational interactive content during the recent election season. Also, Flash/ON2 video quality is extremely impressive these days, and promises to keep getting better. Remember, if a site is using too much Flash or Flash in ways you don’t like you have a great, almost magical way of avoiding it – don’t go there! But, to torpedo the technology for everyone else using it in ways that are deemed useful seems selfish.

    Apple – you know we want Flash on our iPhones. The browsing experience isn’t “whole” without it. One day we may want, gulp, Silverlight too. Maybe.

    Adobe – quick belly aching. We know you can build it for the iPhone class of computing devices. It’s running in your lab. Let it free.

    David Geller, on February 2nd, 2009 at 7:47 pm