At the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona last February, Adobe promised to showcase a full blown Flash Player 10.1 for smartphones. That they will finally do today at the MAX Conference at Los Angeles. 

The new Flash Player 10.1 will serve as a one-piece software that will work across smartphones, PCs and netbooks. But what was disheartening about the announcement was the one platform that was conspicuously absent from among the list of platforms the software shall support – the iPhone. 

The new Adobe Flash Player 10.1 will support almost all the available smartphone platforms – Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, WebOS. The new software is likely to be released in the first half of 2010. Till now, full blown flashplayers were not completely compatible on the mobile devices. So with Flash Lite for mobile phones, it was not possible to extract the maximum mileage out of Adobe’s Flash’s capabilities. However, with the advent of smartphones, the processing power of the mobile devices have increased manifold.

So, why isn’t the iPhone included in the list of platforms supported? The blame can squarely be placed on Apple’s absence from Adobe Open Screen Project. But this does not necessarily mean that Apple is totally out of contention with regards to bringing the new Flash Player to the smartphone. Way back in March 2008, Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayan had expressed interest to develop a Flash player for the iPhone and Adobe had later also agreed to have already been working on the project. It’s been a long time since then and Adobe has still been maintaining the ‘Work In Progress’ status, though the exact timetable for the launch has not been known. Steve Jobs had sometime back downplayed Flash’s capabilities saying he wasn’t satisfied with Adobe’s offerings for the iPhone. 

One of the best things about the iPhone is its mobile Safari  browser but it’s a pity that even after more than two years since the launch of the iPhone, we can’t visit websites that need Flash. Let’s hope Flash Player 10.1 convinces Steve Jobs to change his stance.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

[via | iPhone Hacks]