Adobe Flash doesn't support Android 4.0... yet

Adobe Flash doesn’t support Android 4.0… yet

Adobe has announced that it will soon be ending support for Flash Player on mobile devices running Android and BlackBerry Tablet OS, instead shifting its mobile efforts toward HTML5. So it probably shouldn’t be a huge surprise that the first device to ship with Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich doesn’t currently support Adobe Flash Player.

Still, for a long time support for Flash has been one of the key points distinguishing Android from iOS, so it’s a little odd that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone can’t run Flash at all.

Not only does Flash not come preloaded on the phone, but you can’t install it from the Android Market.

Despite Adobe’s announcement that Flash Player 11.1 would be the last version of Flash for mobile though, there’s reason to think that Android 4.0 will get Flash Player soon. SlashGear reached out to Google for comment, and received a reply that Adobe was working on updating the browser plugin to support Google’s latest operating system.

In other words, you’ll probably be able to view Flash videos or play Flash games on a phone or tablet running Android 4.0… but by the time Android 5.0 rolls around, Flash on mobile will probably be dead and gone.

Posted on Saturday, November 19th, 2011, 9:30 am by Brad Linder | 1 Comment

Anonymous

There shouldn’t be much trouble porting the existing mobile Flash Player for ICS, and unless they add any new features then it’s just equivalent to a patch and security update that Adobe has stated they will continue to support.

However, there should be some distinction between Flash and the Flash Player Plug-in. The later is only used to integrate Flash with the browser experience but it’s not the only way to use Flash on a mobile device.

Adobe has stated they will continue to develop App and Server side solutions, which means mobile devices can still use Flash. It’ll just be either more like how the Youtube App works or with a cloud based solution that allows the use of Flash without it needing to be run on the end device.

So basically, the use of Flash on mobile devices is not so much heading to extinction right now but rather just becoming invisible in its use to the end user. After all, they’ve yet to develop a proper replacement for all of the applications Flash is used for and change for the industry doesn’t happen over night.

Adobe Flash doesn’t support Android 4.0… yet

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