It's going to be an interesting day on Wednesday for owners of Android-based devices. It will be the last day that those users will be able to download and install Flash for Android from the Google Play store for new installs. As we previously reported, Flash will be unavailable to download after August 15th for all Android devices for a new installation.
This is basically the last gasp for Flash for all those millions of Android devices. In November, Flash creator Adobe announced that it would no longer release new versions of its Flash Player on mobile devices, including those based on Android, along with Research in Motion's Playbook tablet.
The culprit was Apple, which refused to support Flash for its iOS devices, including the iPhone and iPad. Even though there are a ton of web applications that still use Flash, most notably games and video applications, Apple's blockade of Flash effectively sealed the deal for future mobile Flash development.
Adobe will still continue to develop Flash for Windows and the Mac OS. Meanwhile, Google has already launched Android 4.1, which won't have any support for Flash at all. Indeed, Adobe has already warned that people who update their device from Android 4.0 to 4.1 may have to deal with "unpredictable behavior" when using Flash.
Source: Adobe
42 Comments - Add comment