Adobe and Apple Working on Flash for iPhone

Saturday January 31, 2009 7:09 pm PST by Arnold Kim

Bloomberg reports that Adobe's Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen has revealed that Adobe is working with Apple on bringing Flash support to the iPhone:

Its a hard technical challenge, and thats part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating, Narayen said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.

Flash is a very popular web plug-in that is used to deliver animation and video content on the web. Apple's iPhone has notably not supported Flash since its launch.

In March, Steve Jobs even said that the the current version of Flash performed too slowly on the iPhone. It's not clear what might have caused the change of heart, though Adobe announced in November that they were partnering with ARM to create an optimized implementation of Flash specifically for the ARM11 family of processors. Apple's iPhone is based on these processors, so it may be seeing the benefit of this collaboration.

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

dmb8021

40 months ago

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/31/apple-teams-up-with-adobe-for-iphone-flash-at-long-last/

Apple teams up with Adobe for iPhone Flash at long last

by Paul Miller, posted Jan 31st 2009 at 9:41PM

With Android getting all Flash-ey, Apple's "Goldilocks" position on Flash -- the full Flash player is too hefty, Flash Lite is too weak -- seemed pretty untenable. Now Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has revealed that Apple and Adobe are "collaborating" on making Flash a reality on the iPhone, citing the technical challenge it presents. What's clear is that with all this work to do, it doesn't seem they're going the watered-down Flash Lite route, but we're trying not to hold our breath for a full-on, Hulu-friendly version that will finally help us get that Doogie Howser fix on the go. Naturally, there's no word on when this will hit.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFYb.P__vEfY

Adobe’s Narayen Says Flash on IPhone Is a Challenge (Update2)

By Rochelle Garner and Erik Schatzker

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Adobe Systems Inc. faces a challenge in creating a version of its Flash video software for Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” Narayen said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

Adobe’s Flash, used to view online video and animation, is installed on 98 percent of the world’s personal computers. While the software is on more than 800 million handsets, it isn’t available on the iPhone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last March that Flash runs too slowly for the iPhone, and a slimmed-down version, called Flash Lite, “isn’t capable enough to be used with the Web.”

Jobs called on Adobe to write a third version of Flash, in addition to the software already available for PCs and phones.

Adobe, based in San Jose, California, fell 74 cents to $19.31 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares declined 50 percent last year.

Economic ‘Funk’

Spending on information technology will help the global economy pull out of the recession, Narayen said.

“In the short run, there’s limited visibility in technology spending,” he said. “But when we look at the macro spending, we think tech spend will be one of the ways we get out of this funk.”

Technology spending has changed in the economic slowdown, Narayen said. Companies’ chief information officers want products that will help them quickly cut overall costs. “You have to show a return on investment,” said Narayen. “That’s where CIOs are looking.”

Adobe is facing a new challenge in the mobile-video market from Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker. The Redmond, Washington-based company is trying to persuade more Web-site owners to use its Silverlight in place of Flash. Microsoft introduced Silverlight in 2007.