Adobe CEO: Flash coming to Android, WebOS and BlackBerry ‘smartphones and tablets’ in 2H 2010
This week Adobe released version 5 of its Creative Suite software compilation. CEO Shantanu Narayen has naturally hit the interview trail to promote his company's wares, but the biggest news from him is actually a delay of sorts.
Context & Ripple Effects
Narayen's announcement lands in a tense week for Adobe: Creative Suite 5 ships with Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill-style headline features drawing reviewer praise, yet the company's mobile story is defined by absence — Apple continues to bar Flash from iOS. A rumored escalation of the Apple–Adobe dispute into a lawsuit over the Flash ban remains just that, unconfirmed, but it frames why Narayen is courting every non-Apple platform at once.
There is also platform-history weight behind this move: Adobe declared Windows its primary development platform back in 1996 and was late with Intel-native Mac apps until April 2007, so committing simultaneously to three mobile operating systems reads as an attempt not to repeat that lag on the next computing shift.
First-order effects
- Android, WebOS and BlackBerry device makers gain a near-term differentiator against the iPhone for the 2H 2010 holiday build cycle — full-web claims Apple cannot match — though the slight delay means none of them ship it before mid-year.
- Adobe's own launch calendar slips: the same executives promoting CS5 are now managing expectations for mobile Flash arriving months after the tablet wave begins.
Second-order effects
- Handset OEMs and carriers can now market 'the real web' against Apple, pushing the Flash-ban fight from developer blogs into retail shelf positioning.
- If the rumored lawsuit over Apple's Flash ban materializes, the multi-platform rollout becomes Adobe's evidence that exclusion, not technical immaturity, is what keeps Flash off iOS — raising pressure on Apple ahead of its own tablet software story.
Third-order effects
- Mobile computing risks splitting into two webs — Apple's curated, plugin-free model versus Flash-enabled openness on Android, WebOS and BlackBerry — forcing publishers to target both runtimes or pick a side.
- The pattern echoes Adobe's earlier platform missteps: if mobile Flash ships late or underperforms, developers may conclude cross-platform runtimes lose to native SDKs on each new device class, weakening Adobe's historical leverage over creative tooling.
The trend: Mobile platforms are consolidating into two camps — Apple's native-app walled garden and a Flash-enabled coalition led by Google's Android — with runtime owners like Adobe fighting to stay the cross-platform layer.