Flash Player for Mobile gets death notice, won't come to Jelly Bean

Flash Player gets death notice, won't come to Jelly Bean
The Flash content of these Jelly Beans just went way down

Adobe has given Flash Player for Mobile its death date and confirmed that the plug-in will not be coming to Android 4.1.

After August 15 you will no longer be able to download the plug-in from Google Play.

Adobe is washing its hands of responsibility for Flash Player on Jelly Bean altogether with its recommendation being to uninstall Flash Player on devices that have been upgraded to Android 4.1.

Although upgrading from Android 4.0 to 4.1 (Ice Cream Sandwich to Jelly Bean) won't remove the Flash Player software, Adobe warns that "the current version of Flash Player may exhibit unpredictable behaviour" if you try to keep using it.

Flashdance of death

That's because there will be no certified Jelly Bean edition of the software and very limited updates after August 15 2012, restricted only to those devices that have Flash Player already installed.

Adobe made the decision to stop pushing the Flash plug-in for mobile in November 2011, deciding instead to back HTML5's faster, less crash-prone horse in the multimedia mobile web race.

Android users may be a little disgruntled by this turn of events, but iPhone and iPad owners needn't worry – they never had Flash to begin with thanks to Steve Jobs' unwavering conviction that HTML5 was the future of the mobile web and Flash was little more than a flash in the pan.

From Adobe

News Editor (UK)

Former UK News Editor for TechRadar, it was a perpetual challenge among the TechRadar staff to send Kate (Twitter, Google+) a link to something interesting on the internet that she hasn't already seen. As TechRadar's News Editor (UK), she was constantly on the hunt for top news and intriguing stories to feed your gadget lust. Kate now enjoys life as a renowned music critic – her words can be found in the i Paper, Guardian, GQ, Metro, Evening Standard and Time Out, and she's also the author of 'Amy Winehouse', a biography of the soul star.