Adobe Flash and AIR coming to Android and the Nexus One
Adobe announced an Android version of their Flash Player and AIR runtime at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. The Flash 10.1 Player should be available for Android in the first half of 2010 with the Adobe Integrated Runtime following shortly after. Adobe AIR is a cross platform runtime which allows developers to create rich internet applications which can run outside of the browser.
Flash has been the subject of some controversy in recent weeks following the launch of Apple’s iPad. Apple doesn’t allow Flash to run on either the iPhone or the iPad, apparently due to concerns over battery life and stability of the software. Adobe has also found itself accused of blocking the development of HTML5 which promises native support for media playing in the browser without the use of plugins.
Whether or not Apple is justified in its decision not to support Flash on their mobile devices, at least Android users are going to get a choice. Apple’s closed-source approach dictates which applications will run on their platform whilst Android puts that choice in the hands of users and developers.