Two weeks after releasing the desktop version of Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe now launched Flash 10.1 for mobile.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that users will actually be able to install it right away. Flash 10.1 will be immediately available for phones using Android 2.2 (or Froyo), but that version of Android hasn’t been deployed to devices yet. Adobe has shipped Flash to its other device partners, too, which means it’ll soon be available on Symbian, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry, Palm webOS, and other platforms. Adobe says it’s hoping to bring Flash 10.1 to more than half of all smartphones by 2012.
One platform is, of course, absent – Apple’s iOS4. Steve Jobs and Apple have decided that Flash simply isn’t good enough for mobile devices, and it will probably never be supported on the iPhone and the iPad.
The question is: can Adobe prove that Flash is good enough for mobile on the new, powerful generation of smartphones (other than the iPhone)? We won’t know that until the final version of Flash 10.1 for mobile is properly tested, so for now it’s still a battle of words, and Adobe has thrown in a lot of those.
According to Adobe, Flash 10.1 for mobile has been completely redesigned from the ground up; it supports multi-touch operation, smart zooming, and accelerometer-aided device rotation. It’s been thoroughly optimized to work with “all major chip and mobile platforms;” in short, we can expect better CPU, battery, and power consumption. Finally, Adobe claims that most existing Flash content will “just work”.
If Adobe delivers on these promises, who knows, maybe after a couple of years Apple will reconsider its stance and embrace the platform once again?
For more mobile coverage, follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook
Reviews: Android, Facebook, Twitter
Tags: adobe, flash 10.1, Mobile 2.0