The iPhone and Flash
It seems that a lot of people, including myself, are clamoring for Flash on the iPhone. I’m highly disappointed in Apple for claiming to have the “real internet” on the iPhone, but then they leave out the one standard that is on a good number of websites, and is pre-installed on a majority of new computers, including their own.
Now, does this mean I’m not interested in an iPhone? Of course not… In fact, if anyone at CFUnited wants to camp out with me at a Apple/AT&T store on the 29th, let me know. And I’m sure I’ll be developing a few CF apps to run in Safari on my phone, to supplement whatever functionality I feel is missing.
Some people in the development community (including what originally started this rant) are asking what Adobe is going to do about it. First off, Adobe won’t get to do anything if Apple won’t let them. Besides that, there are a few things that we all need to remember about the iPhone and Flash…
1. If Apple meets it’s own sales goals, it will have 1% of the mobile phone market. Also, there are no announced plans to release the iPhone outside the US at this point, and AT&T has the exclusive in the US for 5 years. Now, sure, the iPhone is getting a ton of hype, and nobody knows how well it will/won’t do, and you have to admit that 1% of the market is an awful small window to target.
2. Apple is, so far, not opening the phone up to the average developer. Sure, you can build a web application for the iPhone, but it’s treated by Apple like a red-headed step child. There’s no way to get your app a button on the home screen, and so far off-line abilities are not present.
3. Adobe already has a mobile Flash platform, Flash Lite. While I’ll be the first to admit that I’d love to develop full-fledged Flash 9 apps (read: Flex apps) on the iPhone, it would probably be a better strategy to use Flash Lite on the iPhone. The sales pitch to developers can then be uniform… Build once for Flash Lite, and deploy on most any mobile phone. Perhaps Adobe can tackle both, to appease everyone.
4. Apple & Adobe probably have already talked about Flash on the iPhone at some level. Apple knew it wanted YouTube and the “real” internet, so I’m sure Adobe was consulted early on in development. Obviously, something didn’t work for one or both parties for launch, but I’m sure that if enough users complain to Apple about lack of Flash support, they will add it in one form or another. Technically, they could write their own Flash 7 engine for the iPhone, since the SDK is available, though that would seemingly be a waste of our time and their resources, since Flash 9 already has very high penetration numbers.
Great feedback Shannon. Since I haven’t specifically seen anything announced by Adobe, I’m curious as to their position on the iPhone as an application platform. The single cell provider thing is a bummer but if the iPhone does become some major business productivity tool, even that 1% could be a good nice market.
I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what can be done on it and hopefully can use some form of Adobe technology to do it.
Comment by Rey Bango — June 23, 2007 @ 12:00 am
I agree with you about the fact that targeting only 1% cell phone market is too low. But from marketing point of view this is what Apple is good at. They will keep the product quantity low to increase market demand as a result domination of market for this new iphone technology.
I do not know what actually happened between these two (Adobe and Apple) at product development stage but this is definite that it’s Apple who would be more benefited from adopting Adobe’s Flash Lite.
Comment by Make Free Money Online — June 26, 2007 @ 12:00 am
It’s got to be one of the most major oversights I’ve seen from apple actually.
I guess this means they’re not implementing windows media player as well as expect people to have a good internet browsing experience.
No java either.
Im not sure what they’re on, but its pissing quite a few people off
Comment by a — June 26, 2007 @ 12:00 am
my understanding is that they’ve avoided the Flash player to keep processor usage to a minimum. still upsets me as a Flash developer, but from that perspective i guess i can understand. remember, this is supposed to be a mobile phone, mp3 player and browser for (i would guess) a 14-hour day on average.
Comment by seamus — June 26, 2007 @ 12:00 am
700k units sold in its first weekend. Not bad for 1% of the market.
Comment by Rey Bango — July 4, 2007 @ 12:00 am
Thanks for the information, I’m a bit disappointed as well that the iPhone doesn’t support Flash…
Comment by Amy — October 19, 2007 @ 12:00 am
i know nothing about programming but how hard is it to develop a flash like platform that plays flash web content that isnt adobe itself?
Comment by amanda — November 19, 2007 @ 12:00 am
@ amanda:
It’s difficult if not impossible to build your own flash player. You would have to reverse engineer the SWF file format, because the SWF file format spec license specifically forbids using the information for building your own player (http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/). Then, even if you were successful in your reverse-engineering process, prepare to hear from Adobe’s lawyers and have proof that you did it legally.
Comment by Shannon Hicks — November 20, 2007 @ 12:00 am
"…they could write their own Flash 7 engine for the iPhone, since the SDK is available, though that would seemingly be a waste of our time and their resources, since Flash 9 already has very high penetration numbers. …".
If we look so far, we can see also the release of Flash 10! So I think that can be more useful to focus our assumption on today.
Now, there are very few sites that don’t work with Flash Player 8, based on the same engine of Flash Lite 3 that has been just released and is enough to see also YouTube videos.
So, for the actual power of mobile devices, Flash Lite 3 is the best way to bring Flash and today "real Internet" on iPhone.
Comment by Vito — December 5, 2007 @ 12:00 am