Flash Apps Coming to iPhone (No Flash Player Support)

It’s a good news for Flash developer. It’s a bad news for those iPhone users anticipating the Flash support on iPhone.

At the annual MAX conference held on Oct 5, Adobe announced the upcoming release of Flash Professional CS5. What’s great about the announcement is developer can use Flash technology and action script to develop iPhone application. If you are capable to create Flash game or apps, you do not need to learn another new language (i.e. Objective C) to develop iPhone app. Just plan and upgrade to Flash Pro CS5 and the Flash developer tool can convert your Flash app into native iPhone app that you can put it onto App Store for sale or free download.

Don’t get me wrong. This doesn’t mean you can play Flash on iPhone’s Safari browser. (That’s why I said it’s a bad news for iPhone user.) As Adobe mentioned in the conference, Flash player is still not supported on iPhone, though they’re going to bring it to other mobile platforms including Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm’s webOS and Google Android. Quoted from Adobe’s FAQ, it gives you more details:

The new support for iPhone applications in the Flash Platform tooling will not allow iPhone users to browse web content built with Flash technology on iPhone, but it may allow developers to repackage existing web content as applications for iPhone if they choose to do so.

Flash Player uses a just-in-time compiler and virtual machine within a browser plug-in to play back content on websites. Those technologies are not allowed on the iPhone at this time, so a Flash Player for iPhone is not being made available today.

The debut of CS5 developer tool targets to enable Flash developers to develop native iPhone applications and port existing web content as iPhone apps.

At MAX 2009 conference, Adobe also showed a number of applications and games for iPhone that have been built using a pre-release version of Flash Professional CS5. These applications are available now for you to download from App Store:

• South Park Avatar Creator
• Chroma Circuit
• Just Letter
• Trading Stuffs
• Red Hood
• Fickleblox
• That Roach Game

As a developer, I’m really glad to see alternative developement tools for iPhone app development. The Flash CS5 is especially a great add-on for Flash developers to easily port any existing Flash games to native iPhone apps. Probably in near future, you’ll see the App Store are loaded with Flash games.

The Flash Professional CS5 is now in private beta. But Adobe is planning to release a public beta for building iPhone apps before the end of this year. You can sign up at Adobe to get notified when the beta release is available.

To learn more about building iPhone app with Flash, check out the demo video:

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