It has been long known that Adobe is working on a version of their Flash player for mobile devices for some time. Flash 10.1 is currently in beta and has been made available to content providers and mobile developers around the world and Adobe is working hard to get Flash 10.1 on your Android phone the first half of 2010. And, announced just today at the WMC 2010, Adobe states they are working on a mobile version of Adobe Air, which will utilize some of that Flash 10.1 magic to provide mobile devices with a method for “a feature-rich environment for delivering rich applications outside the mobile browser and across multiple operating systems via mobile marketplaces and app stores.”
Flash 10.1 will bring that much anticipated support for online games, videos and other interfaces that are lacking in almost every mobile device to date. It will allow for a more complete web interface, and possibly provide a gap between now and html5, or more accurately, an alternative. Adobe Air, on the other hand, is designed to provide more of an interface for content rich and media rich interactive programs that don’t necessarily require an entire application, and can ensure identical interfaces between OSes and mobile devices, all utilizing the Air base program.
“Adobe AIR 2.0 is a great technology for developing engaging mobile applications,” said Christy Wyatt, vice president, Software Applications and Ecosystem at Motorola. “We look forward to seeing AIR come to the Android platform and developers creating applications that will delight our end-users.”
This might make for another way to expand developers in the mobile market. If you could write up one program that works on multiple platforms, wouldn’t you go that route? Looks like we’ll have to wait and see how this pans out, as Air won’t be available until after Flash 10.1 is out, so look for it 2H2010.
