Adobe Makes it Possible to Create iPhone Apps using Flash Technology

As reported earlier, Adobe has announced the new Adobe Flash Player 10.1, which will support almost all the available smartphone platforms - Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, WebOS except for Apple’s iPhone.

But they have also surprised us by announcing that forthcoming beta release of Flash Professional CS5 will enable developers to port their flash applications to the iPhone and iPod Touch using ActionScript 3.

Adrian Ludwig, a member of Adobe's Flash team had this to say:

"We've done a lot of work to make sure that applications are quick and interactive, and give you the kind of experience that you would expect from Flash, as well as the kind of experience that you've come to expect on your iPhone,"

If you thought this was some kind of joke then there are applications such as Chroma Circuit, Trading Stuff, Fickleblox, Just Letters, South Park, That Roach Game and Red Hood already available on the iPhone App Store, which were created using Flash technology with a pre-release build of Flash Professional CS5.

Ludwig explains:

“What developers have to do is they have to go inside of Flash Pro and they have to export that project to a native application for the iPhone. While you're using Flash Pro to build these applications, it's being converted from .SWF to .IPA."

He also confirms that developers will not have any problems getting their iPhone apps approved as the method is in compliance with the iPhone developer agreement.

But before you get all excited, it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to watch Flash-based web content on your iPhone:

“The new support for iPhone applications in the Flash Platform tooling will not allow iPhone users to browse web content built with Flash technology on iPhone, but it may allow developers to repackage existing web content as applications for iPhone if they choose to do so.

Flash Player uses a just-in-time compiler and virtual machine within a browser plug-in to play back content on websites. Those technologies are not allowed on the iPhone at this time, so a Flash Player for iPhone is not being made available today.

Flash Professional CS5 will enable developers to build applications for iPhone that are installed as native applications. Users will be able to access the apps after downloading them from Apple’s App Store and installing them on iPhone or iPod Touch.”

You can checkout the demo video of iPhone apps built using Flash technology:

This is great news for Flash designers and developers, but they’ll need to wait for Adobe to release the beta version of Adobe Flash Professional CS5 to test this functionality, which is expected to be available for download before the end of the year.

Let us know your thoughts of being able to play your favorite flash based games on the iPhone. 

[via Adobe]

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