According to the following article, no Flash on the iPhone anytime soon:
“Turning back to the iPhone, don’t expect support for Adobe’s Flash technology anytime soon. The full-blown PC Flash version “performs too slow to be useful” on the iPhone, and a mobile version called Flash Lite “is not capable of being used with the Web,” Jobs said. Without an option that falls in between, it sounds like Flash is not going to be supported on the iPhone until the performance of the underlying hardware improves.”
This is ridiculous!! Is a problem on monetizing for Apple. How Apple can monetize from including Flash on the iPhone? There is no clear business model around Flash on the iPhone for Apple to make money, this is the only reason.
Apple will have complete control over native applications using their SDK and iTunes. So where Flash would fit into this content distribution enviroment? For now there is no answer.
As I said before, Apple is creating their own Mobile Content Network Operator. This is the same business model as “wallet garden” that carrier/operators run. Nothing new!
Anyway, if you are in the Boston area you can come to the iPhone SDK party meeting organized by Mobile Monday Boston.
Alessandro
With many phones running Flash Lite 3.0 and several personal communicator devices (nokia n800, 810) running a full blown Flash 9, PSP running Flash 7 (or is it 6?), if Apple doesn’t support Flash, then its clearly a monetary reason and not due to any hardware performance issues. At a minimum, Apple could provide a prompt to run plugin content and let the user decide.
Too bad if this turns out to be true, because the lack of Flash is what is keeping me from enjoying an iPhone. Too many sites I traffic often use Flash in one form or another.
Tech Question: Does Flash lite work as a plug-in with mobile browsers to display content within a page?
Ciao,
@John, is clearly a business decision not a technical one.
@Bjorn, yes. OEMs do the integration between the mobile web browser and the Flash Lite runtime.
For example the Nokia N95 has Flash Lite 2.0 integrated into the S60 browser.
Nokia new handsets, such as the Nokia N96, will have Flash Lite 3.0 integrated with Flash Video capability.
One thing to understand is that the FL runtime is not upgradeable or installable by the users, but is the OEM that might choose to integrate the runtime into the latest firmware of the device. This is how mobile world works.
Here I have listed the various implementations of the Nokia devices versus Flash Lite: http://flashlite4nokia.com/
Alessandro
Ciao Ale,
I’m just wondering if Flash Lite 3 is suitable for the iPhone.
A lot of the complaints are from people browsing the web not being able to see Flash content.
How does Flash Lite 3 solve that?
Can Flash Lite run versions 6,7,8,9 content?
It seems to me Adobe already saw this coming.
Is ‘Tamarin-tracing’ the future for the Flash Player on Mobile Devices.
I don’t agree its just a business decision.
If the player runs slow, it shouldn’t be added.
but thats just an opinion.
Bjorn
It’s fine by me. The last thing I need to do is to hit a web page that wants to download 300K of Flash-based “rich” advertising at EDGE speeds.
Ciao Bjorn,
Flash Lite 3 is basically Flash 8 + Flash Video.
Flash Lite 2.x is basically Flash 7
Flash Lite 1.1 is basically Flash 4
My opinion is that mobile web site should be designed for mobile devices which means content needs to be create for mobile.
A developer should take into account the limitation of the technology.
To me is a business decision. As for the email, maps and 3G on the iPhone.
Email, they used Yahoo, because Yahoo use Flash for the maps.
Maps, they used Google since they do not use Flash. Licensing fees!
Also 3G, Apple would have to pay licensing fees to Qualcomm!
Alessandro
Ciao Micheal,
good point! Mobile site needs to give the user the only information they are looking for or at least don’t bother them!!
This is due to one very important reason, the mobile phone is a very personal device. This is something that mobile developer should always keep in mind!
Alessandro
I agree about mobile sites, but one of the major advantages of the iphone is that it works with just about any HMTL-based web site, and as such doesn’t require the owner to create a “mobile” version.
So you’re pretty much stuck with whatever advertising everyone else would see.
Hi Michael,
you’re absoluteluy right. iPhone web browser do not identify itself as a “mobile browser” so you will end up in having to enjoy full web site, Flash Ads included (and on an EDGE network, this can be a costly experience).
There are other considerations that people seems to not worry about: touch screen devices do not send “mouse over” events and a lot of Flash sites rely on those events to open, close menus and do other things, so many web sites would be unusable anyway. Gestures: people get iPhones because they can pinch the screen to zoom in, zoom out and so on using intuitive finger movements, these things are not supported by Flash at all (Flash has a single point to receive “mouse down, up, move” information, it is unable to detect more than one screen event at once). It is not just a business decision, it was the right decision in my opinion. Also, AS3 VM do not support ARM jitted code yet, so uncompiled actionscript code would have introduced even more slowness.
Why worrying about 4 million devices that can’t surf the Flash web, while other 450 millions can’t do it either?
Ciao Emanuele,
very good points. Just one thing, those are just some of the things that you cannot do. Which actually goes back to my point that you need to design for the mobile.
Agree totally with your last sentence! 4 M again 400 M !! Plus if you do not want to do FL, there are 3.5 Billions mobile phones to look at!!
Alessandro
[...] Ayer mismo hablaba via email con Edgar Parada de cómo estaba un poco el mercado Europeo-Latinoamericano y le comentaba que justo habÃa visto hacÃa unos minutos que el iPhone no llevarÃa Flash Player porque al parece Steve Jobs dice que el player de Pc pesa demasiado (sÃ, ya lo sabÃamos) y por otro lado se supone que Flash Lite 3 no darÃa la talla. [...]
Alessandro, a minor typo in comments above. Flash Lite 3.x is Flash 8 based, not 7.
Never mind, you said “basically”. That works.
Ciao Scott,
ops, fixed!
Alessandro