Adobe Scrapping Flash for TV, Too
Looks like mobile Flash isn’t the only version of the platform Adobe has soured on. The company seems to have given up on its effort to bring Flash to the television, as well.
With its decision to end development of mobile Flash, Adobe is also abandoning its goal of establishing the platform as the common runtime software on connected TVs and set-top boxes.
“Adobe will continue to support existing licensees who are planning on supporting Flash Player for Web browsing on digital home devices and are using the Flash Player Porting Kit to do so,” the company said in a statement given to GigaOm. “However we believe the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a Web browsing experience, and we will continue to encourage the device and content publishing community down that path.”
We believe the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a Web browsing experience.
What does that mean for Google TV, “which includes Flash Player 10.1 integrated directly into the Google Chrome browser delivering the full Web to consumers on their television sets”?
Who cares? Know anyone with a Google TV who actually uses it?
So, Adobe — which once hoped to make Flash the de facto multimedia platform on PCs, mobile devices and TVs — no longer sees that as a viable strategy. Its new tack: Push developers to create native apps for connected TVs using the AIR framework.