Flash on iPhone: Adobe and Apple collaborating

Flash for the iPhone - imminent? Or never going to happen?
Flash for the iPhone - imminent? Or never going to happen?

Despite a number of setbacks, Adobe is still working to bring Flash to the iPhone and it now seems that the company's biggest obstacle, Apple, has been overturned.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen revealed that Adobe was collaborating with Apple to bring out a Flash version for the iPhone through the company's SDK.

He did insist, however, that they were still some way off a finished product, saying to Bloomberg Television: "It's a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating."

On a more optimistic note, Narayen revealed that it was now up to Adobe to create a viable Flash platform, insisting: "The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver."

Too slow

Apple has not allowed Flash to work legitimately on its iPhone, as it believes that the full software is too slow and the Lite version of Flash, according to Steve Jobs, "isn't capable enough to be used with the web."

The news that Apple is now collaborating with Adobe to bring a version of the software out for the iPhone is promising for Adobe – who last year saw its share price cut in half.

Flash is currently available on around 800 million mobile phone handsets in the world and is completely dominant in the online video market, as it's installed on 98 per cent of all computers.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.