Adobe AIR goes mobile, opens new front in mobile war

It turns out Apple may have been justified (though not necessarily right) to treat Adobe Flash as persona non grata. Adobe just announced their AIR platform for mobile devices, essentially taking application development out of the hands of OS makers and putting it into their own. Per the press release:

BARCELONA, Spain. — Feb. 15, 2010 — At Mobile World Congress™ 2010, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced advancements to the Adobe® Flash® Platform including the unveiling of Adobe® AIR® on mobile devices, a consistent runtime for standalone applications to come out of the Open Screen Project™, an industry-wide initiative led by Adobe that has grown to close to 70 ecosystem partners. With support for the Android™ platform expected in 2010, AIR provides developers with a feature-rich environment for delivering rich applications outside the mobile browser and across multiple operating systems via mobile marketplaces and app stores. AIR leverages mobile specific features from Flash® Player 10.1, is optimized for high performance on mobile screens and designed to take advantage of native device capabilities for a richer and more immersive user experience.

So while Apple, Google, Palm, and the rest fight for OS dominance, Adobe plans to deliver Flash-based apps on whichever OS will have them. Ironically, while Flash can be blocked on closed systems, like the iPhone and initially Windows Phone 7 Series, open systems, like Android, will readily welcome this proprietary system running on top of it. Wonder how the proponents of open standards and open source will react to that. Opens up a whole new jar of pickles in the mobile device pantry.

In addition, a new beta of Flash Player 10.1 was made available to content providers and mobile developers.

Via Gear Diary