The topic of Flash on mobile and set-top devices is one which is popular and hotly-debated — made all the more compelling by Apple’s (very) public statements on Adobe’s technology. And, in large part due to Apple’s positioning on the issue, there is a great deal of misinformation about Flash and mobile. (For those who want more information on this topic and will be in Los Angeles on May 11th, check out the free event that Almer/Blank is hosting, “The Truth about Flash and Devices”).

Some History

Let’s step back a bit. The year is 2000. Macromedia and Nokia announced that Flash runs on certain Nokia handsets.

What type of Flash were they talking about? FlashLite. It was a (weaker) version of the Flash Player, designed for mobile playback, and it lived for about a decade. Which handsets? Man if I know.

I never once had any client inquire about FlashLite. I never owned a phone that could support FlashLite. I also knew enough about FlashLite to know that it was always one or two full versions behind the capabilities of the desktop Flash Player. AS2 and AS3 were never supported in FlashLite. Certain folks, like Scott Janousek, were able to carve out a niche executing this type of work. But, Flash on mobile was a small, virtually insignificant niche market for many years.

To people like me, Flash on mobile devices was a theoretical concept — not an actual reality. It was cool to be able to tell clients that Flash ran on cell phones way back in 2002, but I never actually believed it or cared. When we were able to integrate mobile handsets in our projects (as Almer/Blank did for LiveNation and House of Blues, when we built a text-message-to-screen app for their event venues), we tapped into native handset functionality, instead of building custom FlashLite interfaces.

The New Flash Player

Now, zoom forward about a decade. In recent years, Adobe has placed significant engineering resources into the task of improving Flash Player performance (by which I mean the regular, plain-vanilla, Flash Player for the desktop). As one Adobe engineer told me, the purpose of this engineering effort was to “take the Flash Player and get it to run on computers from 10 years ago.”

Of course, Adobe doesn’t really care about supporting 10-year-old desktops — they do care about supporting mobile devices (which are roughly equivalent to the power of computers from a decade ago). Adobe wanted to get the same version of Flash running on desktops and mobile devices.

And that’s what they did.

So, with the recent releases of Flash Player 10, Adobe has unified the runtime for the Flash Platform. No longer is there a “Flash Player” and a “FlashLite Player” — there’s just Flash Player.

Now, of course, in that same decade, the mobile market completely shifted. iOS and Android didn’t exist in 2000, and are now the major players, in terms of supporting rich mobile apps.

The Current Landscape

So, when people like me say that Flash runs on devices, what does that actually mean? The answer depends on which device.

First, to my mind, there are three main classes of devices that now support Flash content:

• iOS (iPhone and iPad)
• Android phones and tablets
• Set-top boxes and TVs (e.g., Samsung)

Now, when I say that these devices “support” Flash, that can mean a few things. There are essentially three ways to get your content to devices of these types:

1) The Flash Player in the Browser

The Flash Player exists for the newer versions of Android, and you can experience the full, Flash-enabled web when browsing on Android devices. The Flash Player is also embedded into an increasing number of televisions.

2) AIR

AIR (the Adobe Integrated Runtime) exists for both Android and iOS. This means that you can create AIR applications with Flash Pro, Flash Builder or Dreamweaver, and then export them as native apps for those platforms.

When Adobe supports AIR for a specific platform (such as iPhone) that does not mean that the iPhone has the Flash Player installed (which is why you can not browse the full, Flash-infused web on an iPhone). It does mean that, using Adobe’s Flash Platform tools (like Flash Builder) you can package AIR applications to run on the iPhone.

3) eBooks

You can now export interactive eBooks easily from InDesign to formats for both iOS and Android.

In Conclusion…

So, in short:

1. Your Flash can work in Android browsers.
2. You can package your AIR applications for iOS or Android distribution.
3. You can easily export your magazines as iOS and Android eBooks.

It is important to note that not all features of Flash will work on all platforms, and you have device-specific performance limitations (e.g., if you plan to stream video to an Android phone, you need to optimize your video encoding settings to support proper playback).

And, of course, it would be way cooler and more exciting if Apple just friggin’ let loose and allowed the Flash Player to be installed on iPhones and iPads. That would just be totally great. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen in the near future (I suppose Apple wishes to ensure that its users can never experience the full web from a mobile device).

Even so, the truth of the matter is two-fold:

1. You can now, for the first time in the history of Flash technology, actually get your Flash apps and content to a large number of consumer mobile devices.
2. And because of this, Flash remains the closest thing to a write-once-publish-everywhere technology in existence.

So, in closing, the state of Flash and devices is strong, has never been stronger, and looks to keep improving in the coming years. To people like me, who have been working with Flash technology for over a decade, this is a very exciting and fulfilling move forward.

One of the best parts about being a Flash developer has long been that I can send links to my projects to anyone in the world, and basically they can see and use it, on most any computer. There just aren’t many technologies that enable that sort of experience.

With these recent moves, Adobe is ensuring that my potential market keeps expanding — hitting not just 98% of desktops in the world, but now an increasing number of mobile devices as well, enabling people like me to express myself, with my existing skill-sets, on tens of millions of new pieces of hardware.

Where Adobe could use some improvement, is in communicating this landscape a bit more clearly. There’s a lot happening very quickly, and many business owners, decision makers, and even developers are having a hard time keeping up — especially when there’s so much misinformation out there.

And, to that end, as a reminder, for those who will be in Los Angeles on May 11th, check out the free event that Almer/Blank is hosting, “The Truth about Flash and Devices.” We’ll have great demos, explanations, refreshments and networking.