Why are Adobe killing Flash on Android??

Posted by jontseng on July 6, 2012 01:14 pm 41

Why are Adobe killing mobile flash??

Just something that's been bugging me ever since Adobe raised the white flag on Android Flash. Jelly Bean and the move to Chrome as default browser, and Adobe's decision to stop new Flash installs has brought it up for me again. I've never really understood why ADBE gave up on this one - was wonder if anyone could enlighten me.

Mobile CPU's have enough horsepower to run Flash...

The biggest argument against Flash on mobile devices seems to be that its too heavyweight/clunky/resource hungry. But given processor horsepower seems to be increasing exponentially I really don't see the justification for this.

In short my Nexus One ran Flash bearably, my Atrix 4G ran to acceptably so presumbly as and when I arrive in Tegra 3 (or Tegra 4) -land Flash should run pretty damn well. A quad-core Cortex-A9 is getting into the same class as a Medfield/Atom CPU (which could just about run Flash OK in a netbook... even when burdened with the overhead of Windows).

New CPUs will only get faster. So why are ADBE stopping supporting Flash just when the available processor power is catching up?

... And Flash is a pretty damn useful differentiator

On the credit side of the ledger, having Flash is pretty damn useful. Plenty of websites I browse (e.g. many news sites with heavy embedded content/slideshows) still require it. Despite the supposed rise of HTML5 the world simply hasn't caught up yet (there's a side argument that this is precisely because Android devices still support Flash - let's park that one for the moment). Anyhow from a User standpoint given Flash no longer hurts browser performance as much as it did on the Nexus One, its definitely something I'd rather have than not have.

Also from the point of view of the Android ecosystem it's clearly good to have it as a differentiator against iOS. Having the Whole of the Internet in your hand an all that.

Plus its got an ecosystem, dev support, widespread adoption... All the juicy things that startup technologies woulkd kill for. So why is Adobe killing Flash??

So why junk it?

So if Flash now (just about) works and its useful why has Adobe been rushing to throw mobile Flash out of the window? Can anyone enlighten me?

- Are there underlying resource-hog / usage / power drain issues that are simply insoluble?

- Is it such a bitch to support on multiple devices that Adobe just can't support the ecosystem?

- Have Adobe had a religious change of heart and decided that they'd rather go all open-standard and kill their golden goose (unlikely).

I'm really at a loss.

An illogical syllogism

So in summary:

1) Mobile Flash works and is useful.

3) Adobe presumably have lots of gain from licencing Flash as a proprietary technology.

so why are 3) Adobe killing it???

J