[Uploaded on August 31, 2007 by nobihaya]

The Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen spilled the beans over progress made on getting Flash working on the iphone yesterday:

MACMILLAN: And then just to follow-up was on the Apple iPhone 3G — any update on Flash support within that device? Thanks.

NARAYEN: With respect to the iPhone, we are working on it. We have a version that’s working on the emulation. This is still on the computer and you know, we have to continue to move it from a test environment onto the device and continue to make it work. So we are pleased with the internal progress that we’ve made to date.

The exchange was made during an earnings release conference call on Tuesday. It is no surprise that progress has been made given the fact that mobile safari is built on exactly the same framework as the full blown Safari.

Whether or not we get Flash on the iPhone is and has been a function of marketing and politics between Adobe and Apple. Indeed the Flash on iPhone discussion is just one part of a much larger battle for web development tools currently going on between Microsoft and their Silverlight Project, Google with it’s support for open standards, Adobe’s Flash specification and Apple.

Macromedia Flash’s early success was because of Microsoft. In 1997 Macromedia and Microsoft came to a bundling agreement with Internet Explorer 5 which allowed it to be quickly distributed. Couple this with a growing developer base that found it easy to use and flash quickly became the prevalent. Interestingly enough, Microsoft inked the deal to fend off the threat from Netscape and Java.

Up until it purchased Macromedia in 2005, Adobe attempted to destroy Flash through a number of failed initiatives including VML and PGML. Once Adobe acquired Macromedia and Flash, it set about extending Flash’s dominance in the market. Flash was given a big boost by the explosion of video content on the net lead by the popularity of You Tube, the first large scale video distribution side.

Today Flash is not supported on the iPhone and Apple have made it clear that it’s preference is open standards using XML, Javascript and HTML rather than any one particular proprietary runtime such as Java or Flash or Silverlight. However this desire may yeild to more practical considerations on making the iPhone platform a mobile game changer and take control of the consumer smartphone market (as opposed to the corporate smart phone market dominated by RIM).

This will ultimately mean that flash is supported but Apple will extract a price from Adobe over that support and that is much better support for Non Windows platforms. Apple will not allow Adobe to provide anything less than a top notch Flash Player 9 for the Mac and iPhone.

And with the 3G iPhone, Apple just may have the big stick to bring Adobe into line.