There will be no funeral and no memorial but Adobe has finally confirmed the rumors. Flash Player for mobile is officially dead. Here is the official blurb 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."
It appears Steve Jobs has reached from the grave and handed the world one last dead, for better or worse. As many of you, I'm sure, remember that back a year or two Apple declared all out war on Flash by not allowing it on its iDevices. Well it appears even bolstered by Android and other platforms Adobe has thrown in the towel. Adobe plans to "aggressively contribute" to HTML5, the platform that replaces it with broader support and capabilities than Flash ever dreamed of delivering.
[Update]: It also appears today that we might have two birds for one stone as they say. Because more rumors are pouring in that the new version of Microsoft Silverlight might be the last. Most well known as "that thing Netflix streaming runs on" it appears this new version might also only work on Internet Explorer on Windows. What this means for the platform is totally up in the air and unconfirmed but this sure changes some things.
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