Google Confirms no Flash for Ice Cream Sandwich, for the time being
If you lucky owners of the Galaxy Nexus in these first days of its release complete with the first iteration of Ice Cream Sandwich, you'll notice that you do not have Adobe Flash Player installed, nor do you have access …
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The Galaxy Nexus — the Samsung-built device first reported as the 'Nexus Prime' back in June — has reached its first owners running the debut build of Ice Cream Sandwich, which Google made official in October with a November release window. What those owners are finding absent is Adobe Flash Player, and Google has confirmed it is simply not there yet.
Adobe's own statement the same day frames the gap as temporary: Flash is promised for Android 4.0 before the end of 2011, while the next major Android release is already ruled out entirely (no Flash for Android 5.0). So this launch is the first moment owners of Google's flagship phone feel Adobe's staged withdrawal from mobile in their hands.
First-order effects
- Galaxy Nexus early adopters get a flagship browser without Flash Player, breaking compatibility with Flash-dependent sites on day one until Adobe ships its promised Android 4.0 build.
- Adobe is now on the clock against its own end-of-2011 deadline for an Ice Cream Sandwich-compatible player, having simultaneously committed to never supporting Android 5.0.
Second-order effects
- Other handset makers preparing Ice Cream Sandwich updates inherit the same hole and must decide whether to preinstall Adobe's update when it lands or let Flash lapse on their own devices.
- Mobile web publishers with Flash content face a shrinking addressable audience on new Android flagships, adding pressure to rebuild experiences in HTML5 or native apps.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Flash supported only through Android 4.0, absent from what follows — plugin-based web runtimes give way to whatever the OS vendor ships by default, concentrating control of the mobile web experience in Google's and Apple's hands.
- A flagship launch shipping without once-mandatory Flash marks the point where its absence stops being a defect reviewers flag and starts being the expected state of a modern smartphone.
The trend: Mobile operating systems are phasing out third-party plugin runtimes like Flash in favor of vendor-controlled HTML5 and native stacks, with each flagship launch normalizing the omission further.