Adobe boasts of Flash smartphone boom

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Adobe has announced strong adoption of Flash Player and AIR on mobile phones.

More than 20 million smartphones were either shipped or upgraded with version 10.1 of Flash Player within six months of its launch, the company claimed.

This announcement comes against the backdrop of a declared war with Apple, who blocked access to Adobe’s Flash Player on its devices, including the iPhone.

In an unprecedented decision, Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive (CEO), wrote an open letter in April last year in which he justified Apple’s decision and accused Flash Player of causing computers to crash.

Controversy also surrounded remarks from Apple that Adobe’s Flash Player consumes extraordinary amounts of battery life.

“This is tremendous progress toward ensuring that mobile users everywhere have access to their favorite content from casual games to web video and enterprise applications regardless of what device they are using,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president at Adobe.

Wadhwani, who admitted the extended adoption of Flash Player and AIR exceeded even the Adobe’s predictions, also said the company has high expectations for 2011.

Adobe expects Flash Player to be supported on more than 132 million units worldwide, and up to 200 million smartphones to be equipped with Adobe AIR applications by the end of the year.

Adobe, which is present at the 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, also introduced the new Flash Player 10.2, which is meant to decrease processor and memory usage while enabling higher frame rates and improved video quality in both PCs and Mac OS.

Apple has made no comment regarding Adobe’s announcement so far.

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