UPDATE [Wednesday, November 9, 10:15am ET] Adobe has confirmed the news in a blog post, saying “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively” (perhaps a not-so-subtle hint at iOS?)
The unthinkable could happen this morning, if there’s any substance to ZDNet’s report asserting that Adobe is about to cease development on Flash for mobile devices in order to refocus its efforts on HTML5 while suggesting that Flash developers re-package their content as AIR apps. Sources leaked the following announcement, allegedly waiting to be made official later today:
Metaphorically speaking, Steve Jobs gets the last laugh. Adobe also axed 750 jobs as part of its strategy shift, sending shares down 7 percent to $28.27 in afternoon trading. Meanwhile, sources told ZDNet that Microsoft might follow Adobe and pull the plug on its Silverlight run-time, which has been living on life support anyway (even though it’s used in places like Netflix):
As you know, Apple’s late co-founder published an open letter in April of 2010 titled “Thoughts on Flash”, sparking a technology stand off between his company and Adobe. In it, he disparaged Flash as a battery-sucking technology for interactive content which doesn’t lend itself well to touch interfaces on small screens because it “was created during the PC era”.
He wrote:
It’s also worth asking whether ceasing Flash development on mobile spells doom for the desktop version of the technology. After all, Adobe did double down on HTML5, having released a number of tools to assist developers in developing HTML5-based web apps.
