Adobe releases its final flash version for mobiles ~ GoAndroid

Monday, November 14, 2011

Adobe releases its final flash version for mobiles

8:11 PM

Simranpal SIngh

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Adobe Corporation has released its final version of the Flash player plug in for smart phones. This release is a result of Adobe’s recent announcement regarding the cancelling of any further development of the Flash player plug in for mobile devices. Adobe however promised to continue releasing patches which would obviously contain critical updates and bug fixes. The latest release was announced by Danny Winokur, an Adobe executive in charge of Interactive Development.
Labelled as 11.1, this new version eliminates a number of known security flaws. Danny Winokur was also quoted as saying that the Adobe Corporation would not release another version of Flash player for mobile phones. He further added that security updates will continue for all of the existing versions. Another Adobe manager Brad Arkin simply repeated the same words of Danny Winokur. He assured mobile users worldwide that updates will continue and this latest version will sustain for a few years at least. Both Winkour and Arkin didn’t specify the date up to which these updates will be provided to the customers.
These comments have invoked heavy responses from top level managers. These managers claim that Adobe’s support policies are primitive and that the lack of a time frame up to which Flash would be supported is highly inconsiderate of the company. Critics view this as an unsuccessful attempt by Adobe to adopt Microsoft’s time oriented support cycle concept. The theory governing the same is the now-famous ‘Five years for consumer products, ten years for enterprise software’.
These managers also assert that Adobe jumps to conclusions too quickly, which is generally the result of changing market conditions, thus creating a direct negative impact on its customers. A live example is the case of Shockwave player which was released in March 2008; Adobe still continues to provide patches for the same.
This new version of Flash contained 12 critical security fixes. The question that everyone seems to be asking is how willing manufacturers will be in providing Flash support in mobile devices considering that Adobe will not be optimizing the software any further. This issue is rather important as many top mobile sites still depend on Flash for providing content. Managers believe that providing a detailed timeline pertaining to the release of updates needs to be provided by Adobe Corporation so as to cause minimum inconvenience to manufacturers and consumers alike.