Adobe pulls back from mobile, TV to focus on HTML5

Adobe will no longer provide Flash for mobile devices and is also pulling back from browsing on TVs to concentrate on PC browsing and mobile apps.

Vice-president and general manager of interactive development Danny Winokur said on a blog posting that HTML5 was now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively, and that it no longer made sense to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

In a related post, Pritham Shetty, vice-president, video solutions, said that Adobe remained committed to support premium video to multiple devices but would not support browsing on a TV given that apps rather than browsing to a website would be primary way for viewers to access video and games on TVs and peripherals. He said that Adobe would continue to support TV apps with the ability to embed Flash video in native HTML apps and Flash-based apps packaged with Adobe AIR, the element of Flash that supports the deployment of applications, games and HD video on devices and systems including set-tops and TVs.

Support for Flash Player was seen as a differentiator for the struggling Google TV platform, and industry observers have seen Adobe’s decision as a blow to the latter. The UK YouView project, French ISP Free’s Freebox and Liberty Global’s Horizon set-top also supported Flash.