Adobe kills Flash on mobile devices

— -- Somewhere, Steve Jobs is smiling.

In a move first reported by ZDNet, Adobe has told developers that it no longer plans to develop future versions of its Flash Player for mobile browsers.

It's a huge shift for the Web as a whole, which has used liberally the Adobe standard for video and Web design.

Jobs, Apple's longtime CEO who died last month after a battle with cancer, had long railed against Flash. Apple's mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad, do not run Flash content.

Jobs' argument was that Flash was a processor- and battery-hogging standard that caused its devices to perform poorly.

Jobs had hoped for the proliferation of the HTML5 standard, which performs the same functions but can operate across platforms.

During Jobs' tenure, Apple stopped shipping the Adobe Flash Player on its computers, a move the company said was to ensure that users always had the most recent version. Many saw it as a power play from Apple, though, who seemed to hope that Flash would become a dead standard.

John Nack, a principal product manager at Adobe, wrote on his Adobe-hosted blog that industry watchers shouldn't read too deeply into Adobe's move.

"Adobe saying that Flash on mobile isn't the best path forward (is not equal to) Adobe conceding that Flash on mobile (or elsewhere) is bad technology," he wrote. "Its quality is irrelevant if it's not allowed to run, and if it's not allowed to run, then Adobe will have to find different ways to meet customers' needs."

Adobe had also faced increased vulnerabilities in the Adobe Flash standard exposed by hackers.

—

Contact Mark W. Smith: msmith@freepress.com.