RIM planning on including full Flash and Silverlight support in browser

By on Aug 19, 2009 at 1:07 PM
Exclusive August 19, 2009

We’ve been gathering details over the past month or so on this, and it’s pretty much confirmed: Research In Motion is planning on integrating full Flash and Microsoft Silverlight support into their BlackBerry web browser. Read that again boys and girls — full Flash support, not Flash lite.

You know when the word “planning” is used in the same sentence as RIM, however, that it probably means it’s a while away. And it is. We’ve been told this won’t happen until next summer or right before it as RIM needs their devices to be more beefed up as well as have access to higher data speeds for this to work effectively (HSPA and LTE). RIM has already achieved over 10Mbps downloads on next generation BlackBerrys in the test labs with test LTE equipment so it’s looking good, folks.

Oh yeah, before we forget. We’ve heard that we should see the BlackBerry 9700 hit AT&T right in time for a nice Black Friday launch if testing goes smoothly. Trackpad and all.

Tags:
, , , , , , , , ,
64 Comments

Related Articles

  • Chris

    Oh, please. I’ll beleive this when I see it.

    Speaking as a Flash developer, I don’t want Flash on mobile devices.

    The only reason Flash is _needed_ on a mobile device is for sites made entirely in Flash with no HTML anternate content. And since these sites are generally very processor heavy, there’s no way a little processor like that on a mobile device could handle the task.

    So you’re either going to have a crappy, stripped down version of the Flash virtual machine running (as Adobe tried to pass off recently on Another Major Mobile Platform), or a fully functional Flash VM on a device that will never be able to cope.

    Either way, it’ll be a let-down.

  • j

    @Chris

    “Flash developer”

    … lol

  • Frank

    Good Idea!though far far away

  • y3k-bug

    I have to admit, I really would prefer if mobile platforms didn’t have Flash.

    I wish the regular web would stop using flash to be quite honest.

  • http://www.silverlightforums.com Allan

    great news! Will help go the amount of RIA applications made and might force apple to follow suit!

  • y3k-bug

    And again WHY DO WE NEED FLASH on mobile devices?

    Flash is graphics heavy. Why would we want that on a mobile phone? Isn’t the idea to get AWAY from a large amount of needless data being thrown at us on a mobile platform?

    I really hope other platforms don’t follow this.

  • mjkamdar

    @john actually im a blackberry user fyi. and comparing my blackberry browser to iPhone or Palm Pre or google’s android it plain sucks. It needs more work and yes the memory is the other biggest issue.

  • John

    Will the porn be hi-def? I wanna see the hair growing out of the pimple on the guys a$$!

  • http://www.twitter.com/astrrivas Jr

    Screw rim. Skyfire is our only hope. Myself if the iphone ever comes to Verizon I would get it cause blackberry has lots to be desired for. I mean every one else has a better browser. Rim needs to pick up the pace and not just releasing new devices… The best browser yet is bolt and needs improvement. But I guess BB browser will do for a while….rim needs to keep the promises short and be able to do lots of changes and not just small ones. As well not discourage consumers like if they ever do it. I got a BB pearl 8130 and it needs improvements on memory and stuff….I hope rim has big plans…in the near future

  • http://blackberrywebside froy

    Hi I wana know how to donload iris browser to my blackberry curve 8350i letme know how or if I can or not download iris browser

  • http://blackberrywebside froy

    Hi letme know how to download iris browser on my blackberry curve8350i or if I can or not thanks!

  • http://www.blackberrymagazine.weebly.com Black Berry

    Well. RIM is growing up in terms of hardware and software development. Imagine taking a virtual tour of a resort on your blackberry while on the subway to or from work and it issnowing outside. The Adobe Flash would bring this virtual to life on a handheld device. Cool!

  • http://myonlineband.com joe

    I think the Silverlight bit is even better then Flash. For consumers this means Netflix. For the enterprise it can be an easy way to port LOB apps built on Silverlight.

    The real trick will be if they can get this working via MDS.

  • aboood

    Love

1 2 3
blog comments powered by Disqus