Earlier this week Adobe announced that it will stop any further production of it’s Flash Player for the mobile market. And it would appear that Steve Jobs was right when he said that ‘HTML 5 was on the ascendancy and Flash was declining.’
Why It Happened:
Basically, the release of HTML 5 is the reason for Flash mobile’s demise. With all of the new features available to manipulate multimedia in the new version of HTML, Flash is obsolete. Instead of needing to have Flash player software or Adobe Air installed on your smartphone to view web video, all of the necessary code and software is in the web page coding. It’s also more versatile. Because HTML 5 is a web framework and not a piece of software, there’s no need to worry about having the latest and greatest update. One less update. One less annoyance while using your phone.
Why It Matters:
This is important because Adobe was dead set on trying to compete with HTML 5 when it came to video and interactive media online and on mobile devices. Adobe also was embattled with Steve Jobs and Apple, who deliberately chose to not include Flash on their iOS devices. For a long time, this was one of the advantages to having an Android device over and iOS device; Android devices supported Flash player and Apple didnt. This is going to change the mobile device market. Instead of competing with HTML 5, Adobe is now setting out to ally itself with HTML 5 to make it better. Future mobile devices will rely on HTML 5 for handling and manipulating multimedia and Flash will fall to the wayside as the devices that use it’s mobile player slowly die out.
Adobe will continue to develop and support Flash for desktop computers. This is good news because Adobe Connect (our live meeting/recording software) uses Flash and Flash Video heavily. Connect should remain unaffected. The Adobe Connect Mobile app, which can be used to view/attend meetings on your smartphone, shouldn’t be affected either because it’s built using Adobe AIR, not Flash.
If you’d like to read the full press release from Adobe, AllThingsD has included it in their article:
More info from AllThingsD.com
If you’re interested in learning a little more about HTML 5, check out this Wall Street Journal article.
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