Flash Fit For iPhone

Last week Adobe and Apple announced they were collaborating on making Flash fit for iPhone. Over the years Flash has become the application to animate content on the web and is present at almost every computer and tons of handheld devices, yet it doesn't work on the iPhone.

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Adobe Systems Inc. faces a challenge in creating a version of its Flash video software for Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” Narayen said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

Adobe’s Flash, used to view online video and animation, is installed on 98 percent of the world’s personal computers. While the software is on more than 800 million handsets, it isn’t available on the iPhone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last March that Flash runs too slowly for the iPhone, and a slimmed-down version, called Flash Lite, “isn’t capable enough to be used with the Web.”

Jobs called on Adobe to write a third version of Flash, in addition to the software already available for PCs and phones. [read full article]

What strikes me is that Narayen said it's up to Adobe to deliver. You'd say Flash runs everywhere except on the iPhone so it would be logical for Apple to be taking the lead here. In the handheld world, the iPhone still has a pretty modest market share, yet it has become such an important player that Adobe can't ignore.