Adobe says a “full desktop” Flash player for Linux smartphones will be released in beta form this October. Flash Player 10 will also be available for handsets running Android, Palm's WebOS, Windows Mobile, or Nokia's Symbian — but the iPhone and BlackBerry were left unmentioned.

A desktop-class implementation of Adobe's Flash Player 10 multimedia technology was first announced by ARM and Adobe last November, and apparently previewed behind closed doors at February's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Spain. Now, the software, which reportedly will require an ARM11 or Cortex-A processor to run, will be delivered in beta form at the "MAX" developer conference in October, the company says.

Adobe's investor presentation detailed Flash Player 10 for smartphones
(Click to enlarge)

In a presentation for investors (above) which is now available at Adobe's website, company CEO Shantanu Narayen said, "We are bringing Flash Player 10 to smartphone class devices to enable the latest web browsing experience. Multiple partners have already received early versions of this release." ARM, Broadcom, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments all have the Flash Player 10 code and are optimizing it for their processors and platforms, he added.

Conspicuous by their absence in Narayen's presentation were Apple's iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry. Apple, which provides no support for Flash in its Safari web browser on the iPhone, has reportedly said that desktop-class Flash is not necessary on mobile devices and is too demanding on their processors. (Apple does provide a native application for playing back Flash-formatted YouTube video outside a web browser, however.)

Narayen said that "we continue to see momentum" for the Open Screen Project, announced last year with a charter of delivering a consistent runtime environment across multiple devices using Flash and, eventually, Adobe AIR. The project — now said to have 25 participants on board — aims to remove restrictions on Flash file formats, open Flash server protocols, and give players and related APIs away for free.

At MWC in February, Adobe joined with Nokia to announce a $10 million Open Screen Project fund, which the companies said would encourage developers to create "exciting and unique Flash applications." To attract funding, applications need to run on Nokia devices, the companies said, but the cross-platform nature of Flash means that Linux and other platforms will also be supported.

Availability

To hear Shantanu Narayen's remarks about the upcoming version of Flash Player 10 for smartphones and other ARM-based devices, visit Adobe's investor relations website, here, and skip to slide 13. For more information on the Open Screen Project fund, see the project website, here.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.