Adobe throws in the towel on Flash for iPhone

Adobe is basically saying they’ve given up on Apple’s iPhoneOS products. Principal Product Manager for developer relations for the Flash Platform at Adobe, Mike Chambers lays out the bad news for Flash developers who’d want an easy way to port their apps to iPhone. 

While CS5 will still export for the current iPhone, they are warning developers that Apple will probably pull their “100+ apps already built in Flash”from the App Store at some point in the future and, most importantly, Adobe have suspended all investments in Flash CS5’s iPhone App export functionality.

What’s interesting is Chambers says they are going to learn from their experience on the iPhone and put their energy behind Android phones and tablets.   He’s excited about Android.  But Is Google excited about Flash?  Remember, it was Youtube that went to H.264-encoded MP4s (and made lack of Flash on the iPhone that much more bearable).  That wasn’t because Google was head over heals for depending on Flash and their technology.

At this point in time, with Google being the underdog in the field, the Android folk are probably looking for differentiators to Apple’s dominant iPhone platform.  Flash is definitely different and brings with it hundreds of thousands of ready-built apps.  Plus, it is better to have friends in the industry rather than enemies.  Speaking of which, no recent Adobe blog post would be complete without a jab at Apple:

To be clear, during the entire development cycle of Flash CS5, the feature complied with Apple