Adobe’s decision to halt the development of Flash Player on the Mobile came as a blow to the company’s 2+ year long commitment. They almost went to war with Apple to protect it. And now this. Adobe’s shift in focus from Flash to HTML5 for Mobile Browsers was taken keeping most developers out of focus. It has left them stranded.

What happens now? Adobe says despite discontinuing development they will continue to release bugs and security updates. That’s all for the show. They will drop support for all future device upgrades. This is a rash decision and disrupts the developer ecosystem who were dependent on Flash for mobile integration.

Adobe tried hard implementing Flash into mobiles but performance reports showed poor results. It almost led to diverging of the mobile development, which either for-sided flash or not. This was yet again, not in anyone’s favor. Flash, as Jobs said, was made for the PC-Era. It couldn’t  adapt to the newer standards. It altogether needed a replacement and a gradual shift but continuous upgrades to same old thing wouldn’t do the trick. Adobe failed to understand it and the reason too is clear, it was and is (On Desktops) its cash cow.

They decide to channelize their advancements onto HTML5, the newest open standard for web development. As the market changed, media consumption habits altered and as everything moved to faster performance – Adobe slogged. The Cost was high. Today, the entire brand identity is at stake. Obviously, by letting mobile phones go away, it’s already running a race to lose. Who would want to develop applications for Flash despite its great features if it offers no reliability. Who would want to waste their hardwork?

This would shake any developer’s faith in Flash on ANY platform. How can you suddenly stop supporting a widely distributed client for the newer devices with one blog post? The last two decades, when closed standards were treated with respect, Flash rose to power. Now it’s time that industry moves to Open Standards like HTML5, CSS and Javascript which offer more reliability and if not provide features like Flash but at least turn out to viable alternatives (for now).

There are several reasons why Flash failed.

  • It didn’t garner support from Apple. They hold a lot of Mobile Market Share. A lot of.
  • It really wasn’t that good. Performance sucked and it didn’t go with the concept of newer devices.
  • It had a premium tag for its developer tools. Premium tag for making something while you could run the same trick with Open Standards turned out a price too high to pay for Adobe.
With Flash going, the industry that suffers the most is Gaming. Zynga built an entire platform on Flash, it is now going to have a tough time. Even the newer standards don’t support something that advanced as of yet. What’s the only option left to developers is to start focusing on making native apps for the Mobile OS’s. This step will of course be readily be welcomed by phone companies who desperately want to expand their App Stores.
Conclusion is that this move is going to cost Adobe everything. ABI Research data suggests that HTML5 adoption on mobile devices will be 2.1 Billion in 2016. Flash could have been there but now it will not.