Adobe Flash Available on the iPhone

Posted by Jenz Johnson on Dec 9, 2010 in News | 1 comment

You may recall that Adobe announced last October its iPhone development tools, including “Packager for iPhone”  which would take Flash applications and convert them directly to iPhone native apps.  However, Apple soon thereafter refused to allow Flash-based apps to run on the iPhone.  This is now history, as Apple relented on its restrictions and will allow Flash apps to be developed for the iPhone.  Adobe has released its Packager and now, the estimated  2 million Flash developers can develop not only for Android devices, but for iPhones as well.  Compared to the estimated 125,000 iPhone developers, this is an extensive base of developers.

The  main reason Apple gave for the restrictions is that the Flash app ate up battery life and was too slow.  Although this was true to a certain extent, Apple was probably trying to protect its development turf.  Adobe has responded to the complaints by promising to optimize its code to produce faster, more battery efficient apps.

Skyfire for iPhone is one of the first Flash-enabled browser available on the iPhone.