Adobe Flash may still be excluded from the iPhone, but the software company is determined to provide a unifying standard for the rest of the smartphone world, and will launch its key handset product by year-end.
The company currently offers Flash Lite for phones, but Apple and others have complained that this is insufficiently powerful for the high-end mobile web experience.
Adobe has since formed the Open Screen Project to support its Flash and AIR technologies as key systems that could bridge PCs and handsets, and is now set to release actual products.
CTO Kevin Lynch, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, said that Adobe has made deals with chip designers and phonemakers and is offering incentives to developers to write programs the new version of the software.
Adobe will launch a trial version of Flash that works with most of the key smartphone OSs - including Palm WebOS, Google Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile - this year, though iPhone and BlackBerry remain off the roadmap for now.
"We need to have Apple\'s agreement before we can do it," Lynch said.
As promised for the past year, the new release will bring fully featured PC Flash to smartphones and Flash Lite will be phased out. Nokia is a key ally, and joined with Adobe in February to create a $10 million fund for developers who build mobile apps for Flash.
Source: Rethink Wireless