MWC: Adobe Air and Flash, mass arrival on Android and iPhone

While everyone knows what Flash can do (advertising banners at the top of websites), not everyone realises that it does in fact make up up an entire work environment and is a virtual machine conceived to execute applications online. It looks as if Air, its desktop equivalent, could be set to make waves in the development of the mobile sector…

The announcement came at MWC: Adobe has made Flash and Air compatible with Android, iPhone compatibility already having been announced a few months earlier.

What will this mean in practice?

Air, Flash, what?

Lets start out basic. Flash and Air allow development of online applications or applications that aren’t compatible with several platforms. This means a developer can code their programme once and not have to think about the final users’ hardware. Flash or Air then take care of adapting the developer’s work automatically for each user (of course, it’s far from being this simple in reality but this is the basic concept).

Flash allows you to create animated banners, games, media players and so on that can be built into websites. With the passage of time, things needed to go further, we needed multi-platform applications that could function either online or not. This is what Air can do for us. Air supports ActionScript (the Flash programming language) and JavaScript (a language of micro-programmes that is much used on the internet) as well as HTML and CSS and can also support a light database.

Of course, it isn’t the only product of its type. There is the very well know Java, promoted by Sun that has existed for quite a few years and Silverlight and its free implementation Moonlight, from Microsoft and Novell. The three products are all more or less in competition with each other, but the Adobe press release could well signal a significant advantage for Air/Flash.

Flash on the iPhone

As everyone knows, Apple has given no encouragement to Flash implementation. Too heavy, too demanding of resources, too poorly optimised (officially) and above all (unofficially) it makes possible the use applications on your iPhone without having to get them via the AppStore. No wonder Flash isn’t welcome in Cupertino! Looking at the most recent exchanges between Adobe and Apple (a sort of modernday version of Dallas), relations between the two companies don’t seem to be at their warmest.


So Adobe has taken things into its own hands. Not only have they made Flash and Air entirely compatible with Android, the Google mobile operating system that is also appearing on smartbooks, but they have also developed a sort of iPhone compatible compiler.

What is a compiler?

A compiler is a piece of software that reads a developer’s code and rewrites it to make it comprehensible for a given machine. The developer writes the programme code and gets it read by the compiler. The compiler then creates a file that’s compatible with the iPhone that you’ll just have to slide into iTunes to install on your phone.

As Air and Flash are already compatible (more or less) with Android, PC, Mac and Linux, the number of potential targets is already pretty high. For anyone who makes their living with such programmes, the number of potential users has suddenly become that much more accessible.

And what about the Windows Phone 7 Series?


Yes, because until fairly recently, THE operating system for mobiles was Windows Mobile. And the new version recently announced is certain to impose itself shortly. What about Air and Flash with the 7 Series? At launch, there won’t be any compatibility, but as Steve Balmer said, Microsoft has nothing against Flash, it just isn’t ready. Adobe has moreover confirmed that it's working with Microsoft on Flash porting. No doubt Air will also soon be ported too.

If all this is confirmed and functions correctly, it would be entirely feasible for an alternative to AppStore to appear (also alternatives to Android Market and MarketPlace) or, at least, to see app developers monetising their work differently to get a larger slice of the revenues generated. Perhaps the much talked about consortium of operators and manufacturers (we’ll go into this more another time) that is looking to create an anti-AppStore, will base its project on Air!

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