Monday, Nov 17, 2008    Text size: 

As of now, Adobe only offers a pared-down version of its marquee media platform for mobile devices. This simplified version is called Flash Lite, but even this alternative isn't good enough for Adobe anymore.

At its MAX developer conference today, Adobe will unveil a version of Flash Player 10 for the Windows Media operating system. The full version won't be available until early next year, and Adobe Product Manager Michele Turner promised that the demo would herald the arrival of Flash on other mobile platforms.

But despite the ubiquity of Flash on desktop computers – 98 percent of them – the flexible media player and design platform remains unavailable for Apple's mighty iPhone.

"We are working on Flash on the iPhone," Turner told the blog TechCrunch.com. "But it is really up to Apple."

That's true. In March, Apple chieftain Steve Jobs voiced his concerns about Flash at a shareholder meeting.

What Jobs termed "proper" Flash "performs too slow to be useful" on the iPhone, he said. "There's this missing product in the middle. It just doesn't exist."

Jobs' argument against Flash is based on the supposed strain it puts on computer CPUs, and its lack of compatibility with the specialized processors that run the iPhone. In response, Adobe has made it known that they're going to with the company that makes processors for the iPhone to develop a more mobile-friendly version of Flash.

But Tech analyst Erick Schonfeld said that fans of one of Apple's competitors would be likely to see Flash on their mobile devices first.

"I’d be willing to bet my iPhone that we’ll see it on Android phones first," he said, referring to Google's mobile operating system.