No Flash for Windows Phone as Adobe kills off mobile development

By Tom Warren, on 9th Nov 11 10:45 am with 39 Comments

Microsoft’s Windows Phone devices will never include full browser flash support after Adobe pulled the plug on its Flash plugin for mobile devices on Tuesday.

Adobe issued an email briefing to its partners stating that the company will stop development on Flash Player for browsers on mobile. Additionally the company plans to focus on mobile apps and HTML5. ZDNet managed to secure the following statement from Adobe:

“Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.”

Microsoft were originally working alongside Adobe for Flash support in Windows Phone. The software maker revealed its Internet Explorer 9 mobile earlier this year and confirmed that the company was working closely with Adobe to see if Flash would work on Windows Phone or not. Microsoft clearly opted not to support it as Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” shipped without Flash. Microsoft’s Windows 8 Metro style Internet Explorer will also not support the Flash player.

  • http://techin5.com Jubbin Grewal @Techin5.com

    I shall go cry in my bed after this announcement.. not.

    • Anonymous

      Adobe is a piece of shit for this. They should have quit on Flash when Apple called them out, way back in 08 or so, if in the end they were going to quit anyway.
      I’m glad I didn’t focus on Flash development here at work. Otherwise I may have been on the chopping block. Flash is now more than ever, Dead In the Water.

  • Simplycani

    tats bad ..

  • http://about.me/mackenzieprice mackenziepricee

    Thank all things holy.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Karim-Benabd/762792087 Karim Benabd

    Good riddance…

  • Tuxplorer

    That’s great news for Windows Phone. And yet another massive blow for the crappy and shitty Android Mobile.

    • Joe_HTH

      I guess once again Steve Jobs was ahead of the curve and right:

      Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

      As much as I hate to give Apple credit, they deserve it for the death of Flash

    • MSfan

      Really, the guy died weeks ago and he still effecting the industry, gotta give the genius his props!

  • phil jay

    HAHA android there’s your flash support, GONE!

    • J A

      No, let me rephrase it. HAHA android there’s your “choppy” flash support, POOF!!

    • AlienSix

      Lets not laugh too hard MS Silverlight is right behind Flash in heading to the grave yard.

    • Guest

      Like flash, Silverlight was crap anyway

    • Guest

      You might want to stop using other people’s aliases and try doing some research.

    • phil jay

      It doesn’t matter. XAML is on it’s way up, plugins will die, native code on the web will come back more securely and better integrated, so will XAML(SL).

    • Captainobvioustotherescue

      gone? You mean they will still support big fixes and provide it to users, they just wont be updating it anymore.

    • phil jay

      Right, but it’s the buzz word for saying that flash is the past in the near future.

  • http://twitter.com/eddielee6 Eddie Lee

    Oh thank god! Now crappy tablet makers can stop saying oh were amazing because we have flash. The thing never even got out of beta lol

  • Anonymous

    Now let’s hope more websites will use html5 as their standard

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_2WNLCWLJUCZ3WEHQUXJOVWISBA Wizard

    Good that Adobe realized the importance of HTML5. Its not worth investing on flash for mobile, personally, I have seen adobe on iPhone, this was almost 2 years back when Adobe had come to our company to demo their products and they had this iPhone where they had ported flash on to it. when they started the demo, the iPhone’s battery was showing as 87% and by the time they finished the demo which was around 6-8 mins, the battery had come down to 24%.
    I dont understand why did Android have Flash on their mobile OS. Android on itself is crappy and top it they got Flash (its like buy 1 crap, get one free)

  • http://twitter.com/commsat Andrew

    So basically, the battle between Flash and HTML5 for mobile browsers is over. And Android is probably the biggest loser here as Flash has always been it’s perk ( for some people ). There will always be some unofficial plugin, but well…with Adobe pulling the plug – mobile flash is practically done.

  • http://twitter.com/commsat Andrew

    Oh, people do love ‘buy one get one free’ stuff ;-)

  • Xledger

    I for one, welcome our new HTML5-canvas-javascript-ad overlord.

    Give some mud to a great artist, and he can paint wonders;
    Give an expensive set of crayons and color pencils to a 3 year-old, and be prepared to spend a fortune repainting your house.

    • phil jay

      at least we have f12/ctrl+shift+i for those kind of *jokes*

  • http://twitter.com/SCGreyWolf GreyWolf

    Yay! Desktop Flash: you’re next…

  • Compu_REDA

    so funny when you read this.. do you remember steve jobs statement about not supporting flash inside iphone???? he said exactly the same words long time ago.. please revise it..

  • Joseaortiz

    Ok so now what. Even playing field now apple user dont feel bad when cant play farmville on ipad .jajaj

  • Anonymous

    Mary Jo Foley is also reporting that Silverlight 5 could possibly be the last version of the plug-in

    • Julio

      I hope not… I still like the .NET & Silverlight environment for W8 slate.  It works great on WP7 and make it very easy to develop apps.

    • Anonymous

      You’d still be able to write silverlight apps. They’re just talking about the browser plugin. With HTML 5 it’s pretty irrelevant now.

    • MSFan

      Silverlight is another dead end MS product going the way of Kin, Zune and WP7  :(

    • phil jay

      SL is not viable as a plugin anymore. In the future there will be other ways of having XAML in the web, because at least me can’t image web without native(and with native there is managed).

  • Compu_REDA
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Boyd/576666141 Jason Boyd

    Android has taken a serious blow, WindowsPhone is shown to be much more sustainable with its choice to go with HTML5 instead of Flash. However, I think that although Adobe has stopped development of the mobile flash, Apple will start to create its own arm of mobile flash through a venture with Adobe.

  • http://twitter.com/cendol_gan Rey..Rey..Reynaldi

    i continue to code in VB6

  • Anonymous

    OK I’m a MS fan. But some of you on here are a bit cuckoo. Explain to me how this makes Android look bad?

    It’s not like Android didn’t support HTML5 in favor of Flash and are now left out to dry. Android has wonderful HTML5 support built in.

  • http://twitter.com/RobertCFP Robert Wade

    This is incredibly fantastic news.  I’d love to see the end of most, if not all, plugins.   Functionality needs to be built into HTML5, not relegated to lame plugins.  So, yes, let’s see Silverlight go the same way.  A competing plugin doesn’t make it an improvement….just a replacement.

  • Mrdeezus

    All this is great news…BUT WHERE ARE THE FUCKING WP7 PHONES WITH GIANT SCREENS AND 32GB OR MORE OF STORAGE AS WELL AS 4G AND NFC? THATS ALL WE REALLY CARE ABOUT TARDS!!

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  • Nils

    Flash is dead… Silverlight is dead… Plugins are dead… Who’s next? Browsers for sure. HTML5 is not mature and will never be… Can anyone redirect me to something (app, website, etc.) cool and performant done with “HTML5″ (I should say with thousands of lines of crappy JS that is not working on half the browsers as usual…)? Tomorrow IT model is based on applications and applications stores (even on PCs and MACs). Everything will be application soon, and i don’t think these applications will be done with HTML5 because real programmers want to program with real and modern languages… So maybe the death of Flash will accelerate the death of concept of browser itself, and for me it is a really good thing.