Adobe announces full Flash Player support for mobile and PC, RIM joins OSP

It’s that time of year when Adobe gets set and makes some huge announcements for its future plans, partnerships and products. With Adobe MAX 2009 under way, there is some good news lined up for the mobile world. Adobe just made it official that full Flash Player support is coming to handsets like BlackBerry (just like we told you a while back), Palm (for webOS) and Windows Mobile handsets. Flash Player 10.1 is also going to be hitting several other smartphones as well as PCs and netbooks, so fret not. We know what you’re thinking – won’t this kill battery life and drain system resources? Adobe assured us that the coming version of Flash is optimized to conserve battery life and keep resource usage to a minimum, which means no lag or freezing up or instantly dead batteries. Another feature Adobe brings to mobile-optimized Flash is the ability to make use of native input methods, whether touchscreen or physical keys, multi-touch, accelerometer and screen orientation. It looks like Adobe is really pushing forward with the Open Screen Project, with RIM joining the ranks amongst other big companies, and making Flash a seamless experience across all devices. Sadly there’s no timetable on RIM’s Adobe support, but a public developer preview for webOS is expected to be out before the end of the year.

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