3 Reasons why iPhone won't get Adobe Flash Player

Adobe announced that it's Flash Player 10.1 will be available by the end of this year or by start of 2010, and it will be available on BlackBerry, WinMo, Palm WebOS, Google Android, and Symbian phones. Millions of iPhone users are disappointed by Apple decission that it will not be adapting Flash Player 10.1 for it's phones.

Reasons:

1. Apple is betting on different standards

Although Adobe Flash powers most of the Web applications for computers, Apple has set its eyes on HTML 5 with the introduction of the iPhone 3.0. HTML 5 makes plug-in-based technologies such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, because it has similar multimedia capabilities to Adobe's and Microsoft's solutions.

Apple is involved in the development of the HTML 5, and the technology is already being implemented into browsers before the standard is final. The editors of the HTML 5 standard are David Hyatt of Apple and Ian Hickinson of Google. As a side note, Flash is not supported on standard Google Android installations, but only custom ones, such as on the HTC Hero.

Apple could change its mind at any time regarding Adobe Flash support. As far as no one knows, Apple might be working on a solution right now, but as usual, the Cupertino Company is keeping mum on details.

2. iPhone is created so it won't support Flash

The limitations imposed by the iPhone software, as in only one application open at all times, means that an environment like Adobe Flash won't be able to install or launch other executable code by any means, including the use of a plug-in architecture (iPhone SDK EULA clause 3.3.2).

This translates that the ways Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight were designed to work are forbidden from running on the iPhone unless Apple decides to make an exception. In relation, this means that third-party browsers such as Firefox or Opera won't be able to use Safari's built-in Java engine either.

3. Apple does not want Flash on iPhone

When Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan said a few months back that Adobe Flash on the iPhone is a hard technical challenge people thought that the iPhone's hardware wasn't powerful enough to support this technology.

Later iPhone 3GS doubled the processing power and RAM memory but still no Adobe Flash on iPhone. Meantime, HTC managed to support fully Adobe Flash on HTC Hero, so Apple is running out of reasons to dismiss Flash.