Adobe Pledges to Bring Flash to iPhones

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) CEO Shantanu Narayen has confirmed that his company plans to bring its Flash application to the iPhone. Narayen made the comments during its quarterly earnings conference call with investors Tuesday.

Flash, he said, is synonymous with the Internet, and for consumers to browse and fully enjoy with Web, Flash support is necessary.

"We are also committed to bringing the Flash experience to the iPhone, and we will work with Apple," Narayen told investors. "We've evaluated the SDK [software development kit], we can now start to develop the Flash player ourselves, and we think it benefits our joint customers. So we want to work with Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) to bring that capability to the device."

Adobe's news comes just days after Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced it would begin licensing Adobe's Flash Lite and Reader software for mobile devices running the Windows Mobile operating system and less than two weeks after Apple released its iPhone SDK.

Whose Web Is It?

The Flash Player is used to play videos, animation, games and other content online. Some 500 million mobile devices contain a version of Adobe's Flash Lite software and speculation about whether any version of Flash would eventually come to the iPhone has been bubbling for months.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive officer, seemed to put the kibosh on the conjecture a few weeks ago when he told an audience of investors that neither Flash nor Flash Lite was a good option for the iPhone.

Due to its innovative mobile browser, the iPhone would benefit greatly from using the full version of Flash -- designed for notebook and desktop computers -- instead of Flash Lite, Jobs said. That version of Flash, however, is too big and therefore runs too slowly for the iPhone.

Much of the Web's animated and interactive content -- as well as advertisements, video and other embedded content on Web pages -- uses Adobe Flash or Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) ' Java , neither of which run on the iPhone. While Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) built a special YouTube site for the iPhone, the original site runs its videos using Flash. Without Google's assistance, users would have been out of luck when they tried to view a video on YouTube.

"The benefit for Apple will be in its ability to support a wider range of desktop Web sites that feature Flash," Vidya L. Drego, a Forrester Research analyst, told MacNewsWorld.

There Can Be Only One

The road to putting Flash on the iPhone has obstacles. Chief among them is the fact that Flash is not a third-party application, but rather a plug-in. Apple's SDK, designed for applications alone, may not grant the access Adobe needs to the iPhone platform in order for the company's plan to be successful.

If Adobe is able to convince Apple to support its bid to bring Flash to the iPhone and make the plug-in available in Apple's iPhone application store, Adobe will have an opportunity seldom seen with Apple -- to build its application its way.

"The opportunity to be on the iPhone is significant. And if that means building the application themselves, that gives them the chance to build it exactly as they want and have it implemented exactly as they want. Apple will have the final say in pricing, licensing and deployment," said Chris Hazelton, an IDC analyst.

Adobe has a huge presence on the desktop Web, and as the wireless Web continues to expand, Adobe likely wants to be on as many devices as possible.

"If that means partnering with a company that is more difficult than other device vendors, then so be it, because they have a strong future, especially in the U.S.," Hazelton noted.