I am currently in Brighton, UK for Flash On The Beach. During yesterday’s “Town Hall meeting”, a panel of Adobeans (including myself) was ready to answer any questions that would come up. As you can see here on the left, the room was packed.
One of the questions everyone asks all the time is when we will see the Flash Player running on the iPhone. Paul Betlem, Sr. Director of Engineering, answered the question by repeating what we’ve been saying for a few months now. When I returned to my hotel last night, I was amazed to see how many people picked up on his answer and how many people see it as the confirmation of Flash on the iPhone. Even Adobe’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen, already publicly stated that:
…we are working on it. We have a version that’s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work. So we are pleased with the internal progress that we’ve made to date.
So to avoid any further misconceptions, here’s the statement that Paul’s answer was based upon:
Adobe is committed to bringing Flash Player to the iPhone. While the development work has begun, we can’t share more details at this point. It is important to note that we do need to work with Apple beyond what is available through the SDK, its emulation environment and the current license around it to bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone. We think Flash availability on the iPhone benefits the millions of joint Apple and Adobe customers, and we want to work with Apple to bring these capabilities to the device.
I was also surprised to hear how many people picked it up as final confirmation that there’s going to be Flash on the iPhone.
Shantanu Narayen did talk about it on a financial conference call quite some time ago as you already mentioned. That said Paul Betlam’s comments at Flash on the Beach as far as I know was the first time this was confirmed as something that is being worked on during a designer/developer public facing event.
Lets hope that Apple recognizes the benefit of having Flash Player support on the iPhone and works with Adobe to make it happen.
It’ll be a lot more exciting *if/when* we first see it running on an actual, physical, mobile device from Apple. ;)
I agree with Peter. People get so excited when adobe talks about flash on iphone ( in a positve way ) that they jump to conclusions which are not correct. I also hope Apple will work together with adobe soon and create an higher and cooler mobile experience. Have fun there in Brighton guys!
Yeah, it’s old news… this pr guy (okay, it’s my attempt at humor) explained it months ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oHDtXmmEWU