Adobe: Flash on 53 Percent of All Smartphones Shipping in 2012

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says Adobe’s Flash platform, like floppy disks and serial ports before it, is a technology that has outlived its usefulness. But according to Adobe, Flash has some legs yet.

In an interview with Reuters, Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for mobile and devices at Adobe (ADBE), claims 53 percent of all smartphones shipping in 2012 will support Flash, Jobs and his Thoughts on Flash polemic be damned.

For comparison, industry analysts expect 200 million smartphones to ship this year, 10 percent of them Flash-capable. In 2012, smartphone sales are expect to hit 300 million, and if Adobe does manage to get a respectable version of Flash on more than half of them, it will indeed have something to crow about.

“You’re going to see Flash not only on [Google's] Android. Consumers will see devices from Palm (PALM), Research in Motion Ltd’s (RIMM) Blackberry, Nokia’s (NOK) Symbian and Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Phone 7 support the full Flash Player,” Murarka said. “Maybe we don’t get to the iPhone or iPad. If anything, we’re seeing continued growth in the install base and the usage of Flash and we see that continuing to grow.”

But that’s today, when HTML5 is still a nascent standard. With its adoption being hastened aggressively by Apple (AAPL), the situation could be very different in two years.