Adobe Pondering Flash for iPhone

Although Apple's Steve Jobs has downplayed the possibility of Flash for the iPhone and iPod touch, Adobe is pondering making Flash for the iPhone anyway.

Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs has downplayed the possibility of bringing Flash to the iPhone—saying the technology doesn’t meet Apple’s standards for video playback—Flash developer Adobe has been peering at Apple’s recently released beta SDK for the iPhone, and thinks it might go ahead and bring Flash to the iPhone anyway…with or without Apple getting on board for a deal.

In a conference call about its quarterly earnings (an unconfirmed transcript is available from Seeking Alpha), Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen confirmed Adobe is considering developing a version of Flash for the iPhone. "We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone," Narayen said. "We’ve evaluated the SDK. We can now start to develop the Flash player ourselves, and we think it benefits our joint customers."

Speaking at a shareholder’s meeting earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs commented the the version of Flash designed for PCs is too slow on the iPhone, while the mobile version of the interactive media technology was "not capable of being used with the Web." Jobs said some sort of "middle ground" was needed before Apple would consider adopting Flash technology for the iPhone.

Adobe’s and Apple’s statements are not necessarily at odds: now that Adobe has had an opportunity to go through the iPhone SDK, the version of Flash it’s considering for the iPhone and iPod touch may well represent that middle ground: fast enough to be used on the devices, but with the Internet-enabled capabilities that would let it be used within the mobile version of Safari’s Web browser. Processing and memory capacity available on the iPhone may not make it a suitable platform for some full-blown Flash applications, but the iPhone is certainly capable of handling typical Web-based Flash content—like ads.