Adobe Confirms Flash for Android for June

Adobe's Kevin Lynch said that its Flash Player for Android will arrive this June.

Thursday Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch verified that Flash is coming to the Android platform in June. In his blog, he briefly goes over the company's plan to shift away from Apple and its coveted-yet-closed devices. Instead, Adobe is focusing on bringing Flash to every other platform that Jobs & Co. cannot control, namely Google, RIM, HP's just-acquired Palm, Microsoft, Nokia, and many others.

However, the meat of the blog revealed that the Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is heading to Android smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, followed by a general public release in June. "From that point on, an ever increasing number and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which we hope will provide a great landscape of choice," Lynch said.

As reported earlier, Google is adding native support to Android 2.2, aka Froyo, which may be released in the same timeframe. It's not really apparent which will come first, however it's believed that the player will run on the current version (2.1) of Android--the next firmware release will simply "enhance" the Flash experience.

In related news, Thursday saw the release of the Skyfire web browser for the Android platform. Although geared for social networking, the software boasts support for Flash video. Unfortunately, that support seems somewhat non-existent when set on iPhone, Android, or Desktop modes. Consumers wanting a real Flash experience will need to wait until June.