The news that Adobe will halt development on Flash Player for mobile is a big boost for competing rich media mobile platform HTML5.

Adobe said this week that it is shifting gears in mobile and will halt further development of Flash Player for mobile while increasing its investment in HTML5. Although Flash is a leading rich media platform for desktop use it never really caught on in the mobile space.

"The implications are huge for marketers,? said Carnet Williams, vice president of InMobi, San Mateo, CA.

?Marketers who were waiting and hoping that their Flash expertise in PC internet would translate to mobile are now forced to adopt HTML5 rich media ads," he said.

?It's green fields for HTML5 for sure."

Lighter performance needs
Flash Player for mobile browsers has been available for the past two years, Despite the significant growth in mobile during this period, the platform?s acceptance was hampered by performance issues.

"Technical people have always understood that the Flash Player on mobile devices is problematic,? Mr. Williams said. ?While Adobe is an excellent engineering organization, Flash development was overly focused on high performance CPU computers.

?With mobile's lighter performance needs, Flash essentially needed to ?go backwards? which is enormously difficult for any engineering team -- Adobe just couldn't do it,? he said.

Mr. Williams is the founder of Sprout, which was acquired by InMobi in August for its HTML5 rich media platform.

In addition to InMobi and now Adobe, HTML5 has been embraced by a growing number of companies, including Twitter, Gillette and the Financial Times. Notably, Apple never supported Flash on iOS devices and has been a big proponent of HTML5.

?In another example of the genius of the late Steve Jobs, he called it,? Mr. Williams said.

?Apple never believed Flash on mobile would happen and that recognition has propelled HTML5 adoption,? he said.

HTML5 is actually a loose term referring to a group of new technologies ? many not launched yet ? that are intended to improve the Web browsing experience through richer interactivity. While the belief has been that HTML5 is several years off, the growing momentum behind it suggests HTML5 is becoming a standard much faster than had been expected (see story).

The growing popularity of HTML 5 is something that Adobe certainly had in mind when it decided to halt development on Flash Player for mobile.

?HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively,? said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager of interactive development at Adobe, in a post on the company blog. ?This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.?

Talent show
Adobe said it will work with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Research in Motion and others to drive HTML5 innovation.

The company?s future work with Flash on mobile devices will focus on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for mobile app stores. Adobe said it will design new features in Flash for a smooth transition to HTML5 so work done by developers will continue to be leveraged.

Adobe will halt development for Flash Player in mobile following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.

?Developers and engineers viewed the ?Flash-ready? Samsung tablets launched recently as a non-event,? InMobi's Mr. Williams said. ?It performed poorly and that reality is not lost on the developer community.

?We will see more effort and talent than ever focused on making HMTL5/JavaScript engines and SDKs,? he said. ?You will also have other technology, CSS3, webkit, and OpenGL ES taking on key functions that Flash is leaving unmanaged on mobile devices.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York/>