Adobe Flash Plug-in for iPhone Apple and Adobe Join Forces due to 'Technical Challenges'

Whilst Adobe have been known to be working on bringing a Flash animation
plug-in for Apple’s iPhone for some considerable time, Adobe have
now confirmed that they are teaming up with Apple to make flash on the
iPhone a reality due to what Adobe term as the ‘hard technical
challenge’ of bringing fully featured Flash (not Flash Lite) to
Apple’s device.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that's part of the
reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating, says Shantanu Narayen of
Adobe. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

The major hurdle appears to be the fact that Steve Jobs considers Flash
Lite - which would have been far easier to implement - far too feature
limited in terms of functionality whilst standard Flash (as used on
desktop PCs) is far too resource heavy for use on devices such as the
iPhone. The result being the need for a new variant of Flash
that’s having to be developed specifically for the iPhone (and, we
suspect, that’ll port nicely to other smartphones at some
juncture) that manages to provide broad functionality whilst requiring
less processing power and less resource requirements than the standard,
full-blown Flash plug-in.

Until now Adobe have seemed confident that this could be achieved
without Apple’s assistance but according to reports just
surfacing, this is no longer the case - though the extent of
apple’s involvement in the development of the new flash plug-in
remains uncertain.

Needless to say, we wait with baited breath for further news as there's
no doubt that Flash functionality on the iPhone would not only be
universally welcomed but is long, long overdue.

AppleInsider