Adobe has gotten Apple’s messages and is publicly throwing in the towel on its multi-year effort to get Flash on Apple’s iPhone and iPad. No lawsuits! No apps! No HTML5 to Flash convertor!
What a difference a couple weeks make.
Over the past month, Adobe has gone from pushing its technology to build Flash apps that can run on iPhones and iPads to seeing the door closed in its face and is now scrapping the project all together.
When Apple first launched its Flash-free iPhone, the industry viewed the lack of Flash as Apple’s big mistake. Thanks to hundreds of thousands of apps, a special version of YouTube and the pay-for content on iTunes, users stopped noticing except when browsing Web sites.
The lack of Flash was also seen as a problem for the iPad before and after its launch. More than 500,000 iPad sales and nearly four million app downloads beg to differ.
When Apple changed the terms of its iPhone developer license, it shut the door Adobe used to infiltrate the iPhone OS. While many expected Adobe to find a new way in, or even perhaps sue over the closure, Adobe has been forced to concede publically.
A note from Adobe’s principal product manager for the Flash platform, Mike Chambers, makes this feel like it’s not quite finished: “The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross-browser, platform and device development.”
Chambers said that Adobe aimed to allow software to be built for, and easily targeted and deployed to, “multiple platforms and devices. However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants. They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms.”
Apple wants its own App Store platform to become the de facto standard. Blocking Adobe is a quick and smart way to help that idea along. Apple wants desperately to keep its big lead in the mobile computing space.
Adobe wants developers to write apps in Flash and then port those to the iPhone and other places, instead of having developers write iPhone-specific apps. That would make Adobe’s Flash the standard platform for writing mobile apps, directly challenging the App Store platform.
Think of this as Apple’s lesson learned. Microsoft secured such a large installed base in traditional PCs that software developers were writing apps (software) for it because it had so many users, and users flocked to it because it had the most software. In all of this, Apple wants to be the Microsoft of mobile devices – something not often said.
According to Chambers, Creative Suite 5 (CS5) is still shipping with “the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash.” He said the change was that Adobe is currently not planning any additional investment in that ability. “To be clear,” he continued, “during the entire development cycle of Flash CS5, the feature complied with Apple’s licensing terms. However, as developers for the iPhone have learned, if you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at any time, and for seemingly any reason. In just the past week Apple also changed its licensing terms to essentially prohibit ad networks other than its own on the iPhone.”
While the technology to bring Flash-based applications to the iPhone has been neutered, Chambers doesn’t believe it was all for naught because it proved that there “is no technical reason that Flash can’t run on the iPhone.”
Adobe is now believed to be vigorously debating its next move. In a recent regulatory filing, it said that business could be harmed if the iPhone and iPad end up supporting no Flash/Adobe technology.
Some say Adobe is considering legal action against Apple, though it would have questionable grounds for litigation.
Despite its Apple considerations, Adobe still has a large market to work with. The iPhone and iPad are the big names to toss around for apps, but Google’s Android platform is proving itself, and Google is a great friend to have.
Android has had a good showing with the Motorola Droid and Nexus One, and Google recently said that apps for its Android platform grew 70% in the last quarter. Android is also slated for its tablet debut later this year.
Chambers said that Adobe is “working closely with Google to bring both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 to [Android] devices, and thus far, the results have been very promising.”
Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 are currently in their final rounds of testing for Android. The software appears to have finished compatibility and operability tests with Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry OS, Symbian OS and WebOS.
In response to all the HTML5 versus Flash talk, Apple has come out with a list of its favorite up-and-coming standards that compete with Adobe’s major markets. An Apple spokesperson said that the company’s support lies behind HTML5, H.264, CSS and JavaScript, all open platforms, unlike Adobe’s closed, proprietary Flash.
HTML5 is a language used to describe Web pages and support video, H.264 is a video compression technology used predominantly for streaming videos, CSS is used to format Web pages, and JavaScript is implemented as part of a Web browser to enhance user interfaces and support dynamic Web sites.
Adobe isn’t out in the cold on these friends of Apple, however. Its Flash Player supports H.264 and its AIR platform supports both HTML5 and CSS because of its inclusion of the WebKit browser, which Apple’s Safari is based on.
That being said, Apple was very clearly targeting Adobe with its recent changes. Some of the firms that market other cross-platform compilers agreed. “It’s not a coincidence that this came out just days before Adobe launched CS5,” Scott Schwarzhoff, VP of marketing at Appcelerator, whose Titanium tool produces native iPhone applications from JavaScript and HTML, told Computer World.
Adobe and Apple are going to be parting ways in the mobile space, though they’ll still likely remain heavily connected for desktops and laptops in the foreseeable future. At this point Apple is going to continue investing in HTML5 and work with content providers to help sites upgrade and support the iPhone and iPad.
If Netflix and YouTube can build a way for their entire library to be iPad-compatible, there’s no reason to suspect that any video service out there can’t do the same.
Apple will go after app developers much more than it will pursue platforms to convert to its ways, so it’ll keep touting its booming iPad and iPhone sales numbers and app downloads. The way to a developer’s heart is through his wallet.
Adobe is in a good spot to make some very big friends. It and Google have been combining forces lately, especially with the direct Flash integration of the Chrome browser and, supposedly, its Chromium OS.
We still contend that there’s a lot of revenue to be made off of a product suite that converts Flash to HTML5. This could be a great tool for developers and could be added to its upcoming CS5 as a supplement.
Adobe would have a strong hold on the market if it came out with a significant tool, especially if it works with existing browsers. Google’s Chrome will have a very strong Flash presence, and an Adobe conversion tool would likely be just as enthusiastically integrated.