Full Fat Flash Goes Mobile

Flash Player 10.1 was revealed at the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles on the 5th October, which revealed that rather than a  ”lite” version, the full desktop version will be delivered to mobile devices.

But do not expect to see it for the Apple iPhone yet. Supported mobile operating systems include Windows Mobile 6.5, Symbian S60, Google Android and the Palm Web OS. Actual devices with Flash 10.1 are promised for the first half of 2010 and will provide support for multi-touch gestures and accelerometers where present.

Although Flash is important for video and gaming in desktop computing (75% of video and 70% of games on the web use Flash), I cant help but feel that applications provide are more suitable platform for delivering this content on mobile. Regardless, this will have a positive impact upon the future of mobile web development, and hopefully should not encourage dedicated mobile flash sites too soon. For now at least, this should be solely be employed to allow mobile users with top end handsets to view full websites where needed (which has been the main issue). In the meantime, we need to continue to support current mobile web standards that emphasise usability and accessibility, and not get too carried away that we can suddenly add animated menus and headers.

That all seems rather negative for something we have been waiting for for so long, but as always being wary of the potential pitfalls. What do you think? Would you prefer to have gaming delivered via the mobile web browser or applications on your handset? Is this announcement going to have a major impact on the future of mobile web design?