“There are tons of implications to Adobe dropping future mobile development of the Flash plug-in, but one of the most immediate is for those whose job it is to market and sell Android tablets,” Ina Fried reports for AllThingsD. “Flash support has been one of the key advantages that aspiring iPad competitors have used to tout their devices.”
“With tablets, though, Flash compatibility (poor performance notwithstanding) had been a key selling point for those looking to take on the iPad,” Fried reports. “It was a major component in ads from Toshiba, Research In Motion, Motorola and others looking to grab a piece of the tablet market.”
“A Google representative could not immediately be reached for comment. RIM, for its part, says it has licensed Adobe’s source code and plans to continue supporting Flash on the PlayBook,” Fried reports. “‘As an Adobe source code licensee, we will continue to work on and release our own implementations. RIM remains committed to delivering an uncompromised Web browsing experience to our customers, including native support for Adobe Flash Player on our BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (similar to a desktop PC browser), as well as HTML5 support on both our BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook browsers,’ RIM said in a statement to AllThingsD.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Dead Company Walking is going to keep Dead End Tech alive on their Dead Pretend iPad? Beleaguered RIM’s perennially-distracted half-CEO Balsillie has a better chance of owning an NHL team.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Beleaguered Adobe pulls plug on Flash; axes 750 jobs; shares drop – November 9, 2011
Adobe ceases development on Flash Player for mobile, refocuses efforts on HTML5 – November 9, 2011
Study: iOS users view 80% of mobile video – May 23, 2011
Apple CEO Steve Jobs was right about Adobe’s Flash – May 2, 2011
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen believes his firm doesn’t need Apple or the iPad – August 16, 2010
Steve Jobs posts rare open letter: Thoughts on Flash – April 29, 2010
“Flash support has been one of the key advantages that aspiring iPad competitors have used to tout their devices.”
No. Flash support has been a key distinction. Clearly, there was no advantage to supporting Flash; market share and internet usage show that.
Indeed. On the Playbook, even having a second Flash element in addition to the main content (e.g. the ubiquitous banner ad) would make the main content skip or hiccup fairly often.
And then there’s some Flash videos with the playback time bar only 3 pixels high. You can barely hit that with a freaking mouse, good luck on a touch screen!
It’s a pointless resurrection of a dead format only held in place by what remaining Flash is left on the net, which will start to recede as those things are replaced by HTML5 versions and idiots stop placing new Flash media on the net. Trumpeting a dead so-called “advantage” that never worked well to begin with on computers and especially tablets is pathetic. Moving on…
I just had to share this post from the Crackberry forums. The following post speaks volumes of ignorance of all things Crackberry.
This post is verbatim.
Subject line: somenthing is not right
i dont really wanna make especulation but i dont get how a technology like flash had make a decision like that when they are just finally start 2 get good results in video and graffics resolution in mobile devices like playbook and android devices… im pretty sure in my opinion and i know maybe a few people agree with me.. im sure apple did pay some big money under the table to adobe so they stop developing for mobile devices and im sure had make money enought to pay a price like that, they start to see how they went down on wall street and they knew the beginin of the end for them was about to start with samsung and android both with flash support went to the top and is acctually number 1 and thats a fact( my apologie to my bb brother but im just trying to understand how adobe did a dumb decision like that when they are finally gettin results with mobile flash im a bb and playbook user myself!).. so they use the oldest trick to buy adobe consince and even make them fired people… so u can imagine how much apple might pay them!… thats my conspiracy theory!!!
Crackberry INDEED!!
i rilly think thats tipacle way for android uers to think and speek. LOLz!!!!!!!!
This is funny, even Adobe themselves are moving ahead, but here is RIm… They probably would love to get rid of touchscreens as well.
How do you spell denial?
“It ain’t a river in Egypt”
It’s not so much that Adobe has abandoned mobile flash as it is admitting that it never existed and cannot exist. Flash video works (sort of) Non these so-called flash enabled devices. Games, on the other hand, are a complete loss. Tablets and iPads (it may be useful to consider them two different classifications) do not have a mouse and cannot use mouse type interactions. Then on top of that are the relatively minor considerations of CPU and power usage.
Tablets that “support” Flash get around the mouse restriction by having an actual cursor you drag around with your finger. It’s incredibly backwards, shoe-horning in a UI element where it doesn’t belong, and it’s no wonder such solutions haven’t taken off with the consumers at large.
I tried it on an HP touchpad that was on loan from HP. WHile for most other purposes it was fine (I even considered getting it ) the mouse interaction was abominable. Totally unusable. Which is why I feel that flash on this device was a non-starter. I could get movies using HTML5 that played better than the flash content and could not get around the need for a keyboard and mouse to play games and to use many flash-based websites. It could, sort of, replace the iPad but not my notebook. I wish HP had kept it, I still think that it was MS who ordered it killed on pain of higher license fees for all laptops.
Shareholders should fire the CEO’s of Rim !!!
No. They are both doing an exceptional job. If anything they should renew their contract and allow them to make any decision that they wish without intervention.
I will never ceased to be amazed at the lack of common sense that swirls around this world. People say being able to run buggy, poor performing software that introduces security lapses is a reason to purchase hardware.
These must be the same idiots demanding that Joe Paterno be allowed to continue coaching.
I wonder if the folks at RIM have any idea how much work it really is maintaining a platform.
I wonder how long it will take them to find out.
(And I wonder if they’ll survive long enough to learn from it!)
RIM is really gunning for that prestigious Corporate Darwin Award.
If someone other than Adobe makes modifications to the code, is it still Flash?
(similar to say Amazon’s modifications to Android.)
Companies tried to use it as a selling point, but it didn’t work, so it hardly matters. It’s not as if sales can go down any further.
In other news . . .
Rim introduces a new permanent storage media that uses a shorter 5 bit code stored on paper tape as a series of punched holes. They are hopeful that it will eliminate the outages they are having due to server hd failure. A high ranking executive says that it is completely secure and not readable by any existing system in the world.
Now that was funny. 😀
Is this an exile or a quarantine?
Ok, I concede my bias. I am definitely an iPhone/iPad/Mac person. However, in what seems like a generation ago, I was a Blackberry user. And several people in our public agency still use Blackberrys.
I am really baffled by the apparent incompetence of the so-called Co-CEOs of RIM. I am even more baffled that their shareholders continue to put up with this. The creator/developer of Flash has all but conceded that it is a veritable failure on mobile devices. Yet RIM, in the infinite wisdom of the two “geniuses” who run that company, wants to keep trying with it. The market has spoken. They are choosing to ignore it.
It’s sad to watch a company that was king of hill in the mobile sector just devolve into a worthlessness. Fare-thee-well, RIM.
You are a smart man DF.
If the following post, copied from the crackberry site is any indication of the remaining customer base for RIM well I must say too Fare-thee-well RIM and as far as I am concerned GOOD RIDANCE! The blind leading the blind, ignorant and let’s not forget totally uneducated.
Here is the post once more from the top.
somenthing is not right
i dont really wanna make especulation but i dont get how a technology like flash had make a decision like that when they are just finally start 2 get good results in video and graffics resolution in mobile devices like playbook and android devices… im pretty sure in my opinion and i know maybe a few people agree with me.. im sure apple did pay some big money under the table to adobe so they stop developing for mobile devices and im sure had make money enought to pay a price like that, they start to see how they went down on wall street and they knew the beginin of the end for them was about to start with samsung and android both with flash support went to the top and is acctually number 1 and thats a fact( my apologie to my bb brother but im just trying to understand how adobe did a dumb decision like that when they are finally gettin results with mobile flash im a bb and playbook user myself!).. so they use the oldest trick to buy adobe consince and even make them fired people… so u can imagine how much apple might pay them!… thats my conspiracy theory!!!
Yup
It seems as though RIM is determined to become an island that no one wants to inhabit.
Will each devise have a picture of a zombie on its homescreen, one that can’t be replaced? It would be the only appropriate thing to display to one and all they’re holding an example of RIM’s rotting corpse that refuses to die.
If everyone drops Flash, as they are doing on mobile devices, then the Playbook will be the ONLY guys to have it!
This would be a kind of exclusivity for them, I suppose.
Maybe they should introduce Amiga compatibility too?
Too bad. I really wanted Balsillie to get a pro hockey team.
At this rate, he won’t be able to afford an OHL franchise.
Wait! Did I really read this?
“Flash support has been one of the key advantages that aspiring iPad competitors have used to tout their devices.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
And now the joke is over. 🙁
But what’s this?
“RIM, for its part, says it has licensed Adobe’s source code.”
This is going to be GREAT! I’m smiling again. Get going RIM! I can hardly wait for the madcap laughs. 😈