Handheld Learning Forum

Adobe made comments today that they will be delivering a Flash client for the iPhone. According to Adobe's Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen, Adobe has downloaded the iPhone SDK and is planning on building a Flash Player for the iPhone and distributing it via Apple's iTunes App store.

"We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone," Narayen said. "We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves."

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/03/18/adobe-bringing-flash-to-the-iphone/

That's a really strange announcement.

Adobe are talking about writing a standalone Flash Player using the iPhone SDK. That's all very well, and even exciting for standalone applications, probably meaning some sort of AIR runtime on top of the SDK.

But that still doesn't constitute a plugin for Safari on the iPhone. So what everybody has been crying out for (and what I thought would be the only reason for Apple to introduce Flash), is the ability to view/use websites that have embedded Flash in the default browser. Richard Leggett points out (http://www.richardleggett.co.uk/blog/index.php/2008/03/19/flash_on_iphone) that one could write a browser extension using the WebKit browser, but according to the iPhone SDK rules, writing a plugin might not be allowed anyway.

 ???

update: More clarification on the matter from Bill Perry, Mr Mobile at Adobe (http://www.flashdevices.net/2008/03/adobe-flash-player-coming-to-iphone.html).

Adobe backs off iPhone Flash statement

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/03/21/adobe-backs-off-iphone-flash-statement/

FWIW, for years, people have been trying to put flash in windows mobile phones - these days, it is something that you see everywhere. i remember even signing a petition one time about just that.