ADOBE DROPPING ITS FLASH VIDEO FOR SMARTPHONES

In an announcement that would have brought a smile to the face of Steve Jobs had he been alive, Adobe has revealed it is abandoning its Flash video player for mobile devices. Jobs had refused to include the player in his iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices on the grounds that it sucked up too much battery power and CPU activity. Apple’s devices rely principally on another technology platform called HTML5. Throwing in the towel today (Wednesday), Adobe said, “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively. This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community. … We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations.” The company said that it would continue to develop the Flash Player for desktop and laptop computers.