Adobe has told developers that it will soon cease development of its Flash Player for mobile devices. Citing sources close to Adobe that have been briefed on the company’s future development plans, ZDNet reports that Adobe plans to release the following announcement:
“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.”
Adobe and Apple had an ongoing public dispute over mobile Flash, as the latter refused to support Flash on its iOS devices. The situation prompted late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to pen an open letter, entitled “Thoughts on Flash”, that called for the embrace of open standards such as HTML5 instead.
