Adobe Bringing Flash To Smartphones With ARM ChipsAdobe Bringing Flash To Smartphones With ARM Chips

Adobe and ARM announced Monday a technology collaboration that will enable Adobe Flash Player 10 and AIR on a host of ARM-powered devices, including smartphones, netbooks, set-top boxes, and other mobile computing devices.

The news comes as part of Adobe's MAX conference in San Francisco, and it targets devices using the ARM11 and Cortex A series of processors with the ARMv6 and ARMv7 architectures. Devices with these chipsets are expected to be available in the second half of 2009. The partnership stems from Adobe's Open Screen Project, which is an initiative to get Adobe's platforms on as many Internet-connected devices as possible.

"Adobe Flash is the leading video format on the Web today, and this collaboration with ARM is another important step towards bringing the complete Web experience to mobile devices worldwide," said Gary Kovacs, Adobe's VP of mobile and devices, in a statement. "We are pleased to work with ARM and the other industry leaders in the Open Screen Project, to make browsing and applications as rich and powerful in mobile as they are on the desktop."

Adobe's Flash is dominant on the desktop, but it has a much smaller footprint in the mobile market. One of the main criticisms of Flash on smartphones is the demands it places on a handset's resources, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs has even said Flash is not good enough yet for the popular iPhone 3G. Adobe and ARM said devices in the deal have been optimized to have low power consumption.

For Web developers already familiar with Flash environments, this move could potentially open up a huge audience. The mobile space is becoming increasingly important as mobile broadband networks improve and as consumers get more comfortable browsing from a smartphone.