Adobe confirmed two weeks ago that it would stop supporting Flash for mobile browsers. However, the company has kept an ace up its sleeve before saying goodbye to this application. The company will release an update later this year that will support Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android.
One of the differences between Android and other mobile operating systems was that the former did include full support for Flash. In recent days, Google confirmed that although Ice Cream Sandwich does not have support for Flash nor for its compatible application, they will soon release an update that will include Flash support.
“Flash has not been released yet for Ice Cream Sandwich but Adobe will support Flash for this Android version” said the Google team. As recorded by TechCrunch, ICS will have Adobe’s support for Flash by the end of this year.
Ice Cream Sandwich is the last major Android release that will support Flash, an endangered technology, but still very present on the Internet. It all started when Apple refused to use the Flash platform on its devices, and, despite all the media criticism, won the battle with Adobe.
When Apple launched its iPhone and iPad mobile devices, Flash was the predominantly software to show multimedia content, like videos or photo galleries. However, Steve Jobs did not want any of this technology on his devices, arguing that it was unsafe and was consuming to many resources.
Android Ice Cream Sandwich No Support For Flash Yet
As Apple’s portable devices gained presence among users, more and more developers of applications and websites started to use open sources that were compatible with iOS itself, the mobile operating system from Apple.
After several years of, Adobe Systems announced nearly two weeks ago that they were abandoning Flash. With this abandon, Apple won the battle it had for some time with Adobe for the standard video format used in mobile devices.
In addition, other large companies like Microsoft also decided to drop Flash from their products. Microsoft applied this strategy on Internet Explorer 10, the latest version of their browser that will be available in Window 8. Without support, Adobe’s tool for multimedia content failed and was over-passed by open source applications like HTML5.
As mobile devices, for now, Research In Motion (RIM) will be the only one that will continue to support Flash, and more specifically into their Playbook tablet, though Adobe has decided to abandon the project. Adobe said that “RIM has the ability and resources to continue working” with Flash 11.1 on its BlackBerry Playbook.
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