Adobe announces AIR for mobile devices and joins LiMo foundation

Adobe, in its quest to see Flash and AIR on all mobile platforms, has announced Adobe AIR for mobile devices and has joined the mobile-Linux-on-phones group, the LiMo Foundation. Adobe's AIR is based on the as yet un-launched Flash Player 10.1, which it says is optimised "for high performance on mobile devices". A beta of Flash Player 10.1 has been made available to mobile developers and is expected to be generally available in the first half of this year. Flash Player 10.1 will run on Linux based mobile platforms such as Android and Palm WebOS, as well as SymbianOS, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. Adobe says that AIR on Android support is expected some time this year.

While the AIR announcement does not mention the LiMo platform, in a separate announcement Adobe says it has joined the LiMo foundation and will work with LiMo members to add a Flash Player API to LiMo. LiMo devices are mostly sold in the Asian markets and only a handful have appeared in Europe. The Limo Foundation itself has announced the availability of the R3 version of the LiMo platform which includes location based services among the general updating of the mobile platform.

Adobe say that these moves should see Flash Player on nearly all mobile platforms. Only Apple is holding out against Flash, preferring to use HTML5 based technology rather than incorporate Adobe's proprietary runtimes into the iPhone or forthcoming iPad.

(djwm)