Flash 10 for Mobile Devices

Adobe and ARM today announced that they are joining forces to bring Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR to ARM powered devices in a move that Adobe hopes will lower power consumption for mobile devices running Flash and AIR content, and make it easier for users to play video on a variety of devices.



According to the statement, the partnership stems from the Open Screen Project, Adobe's industry-wide initiative set to address challenges of Web browsing on a broad range of screens.

The joint technology will target the ARMv6 and ARMv7 architectures used in ARM11 processors as well as the upcoming Cortex-A series processors.



ARM believes that the resulting technology will run on "billions of devices from our partners, such as pocket-sized mobile devices, mobile computing platforms, set-top boxes, digital TVs and automotive infotainment," said vice president of marketing, Ian Drew in the statement. "The combination of Adobe Flash and ARM's low-power processor IP and Mali GPU will ensure a fantastic Internet experience for consumers on the world's leading 32-bit architecture."



Getting Flash on mobiles in an efficient manner has been a goal of Adobe for some time. The majority of mobile phones that can use Flash at the moment use Flash Lite, the cut down version of the technology, and one that is limited in what it can play.



Although the technology is not expected to be available until the second half of 2009, Adobe will demonstrate Flash Player 10 during the Adobe MAX developer conference this week in San Francisco.