The move is likely to welcomed by smartphone and tablet software developers, Infosecurity notes, as HTML5 technology is widely recognized as being more flexible and secure than Flash – which was originally developed as Macromedia Flash in the 1990s as a method of displaying multimedia on multiple computing platforms.
For various reasons, Apple has consistently refused to support Flash on the iPhone and iPad platforms, despite initially embracing the multimedia format in its early iPhone operating system. Since then, a number of microbrowser developers – notably Skyfire – have developed partial workarounds to allow Flash videos (but not games) to be shown on the iPhone and iPad.
Steve Jobs, Apple's late co-founder, is popularly reported to have balked at the idea of running Flash on the iPhone, claiming that the multimedia player drained the smartphone's battery, although many experts claim this is not the case.
Commenting on the developments, Vanja Svajcer, a principle security researcher with Sophos, says that, even if the death of Flash for mobile platforms is imminent, Flash for desktop platforms is still very much alive.
“Adobe Flash vulnerabilities, together with Java virtual machine and Adobe Reader vulnerabilities, have been the most common causes for drive-by download malware infections”, he said in his latest security posting.
“It is yet uncertain what is the future of Flash on desktop, but let us hope that the widespread acceptance of HTML5 will drive Adobe in the right direction of killing Flash players on all remaining platforms”, he added.