Adobe may have issued a death warrant for Flash on mobile devices, but that’s not stopping RIM from throwing its weight behind supporting the multimedia platform on its PlayBook tablet. RIM plans to continue developing its own version of Flash Player for its tablet, and will support HTML5, too.
“As an Adobe source code licensee, we will continue to work on and release our own implementations,” RIM told AllThingsD in a statement. “RIM remains committed to delivering an uncompromised Web browsing experience to our customers, including native support for Adobe Flash Player on our BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, as well as HTML5 support on both our BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook browsers.”
Adobe announced on Wednesday that it is dropping the mobile Flash Player platform to focus on HTML5 and desktop versions of Flash.
“HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively,” said Adobe vice president and general manager of interactive development Danny Winokur. “This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.”
RIM’s announcement must come as a relief for the handful of consumers that own a PlayBook since they’ll be able to continue browsing the Internet just as they currently do.
For its part, RIM is in a position where it had to confirm its support for mobile Flash since the company has touted the feature as a big selling point for the PlayBook. With little else to entice potential customers away from Apple’s iPad.
In the end, however, it may not be such a big deal since Adobe is already endorsing HTML5 as the tool of choice for mobile content, which means fewer Web coders will see any incentive to push Flash for smartphones and tablets.