Adobe Wants Smart TV App Developers To Use AIR, Not Flash

RC
Richard Carlton

Support for the development of Flash applications on both internet-connected Smart TVs and Android-based mobile devices will soon be ending. Following an announcement from Adobe that it will no longer be supporting the use of Flash on smartphones, Blu-ray players or tablets, the company is now recommending that all future apps for internet-enabled HDTV sets are developed using its AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) platform.

Smart TV apps
Adobe wants Smart TV app developers to use AIR, not Flash

The ceasing of all future support and development for Flash is, however, only limited to these devices – the multimedia platform will continue to be offered and supported on PCs for the foreseeable future. The Flash-enabled internet browsers that are currently being used by a number of Smart TV makers will no longer be receiving support from Adobe, but the web browsers themselves will still function, just without any further updates coming out for them.

There is speculation that one of the major factors that pushed Adobe into making this decision is the ongoing dispute the company has been having with Apple over the latter’s refusal to support any Flash-based apps on its ever-popular range of iPhone or iPad devices. Whether this is true cannot currently be confirmed as Adobe has refused to provide a reason for its move away from Flash and towards other platforms like AIR and even the new HTML5.

The move from Flash to the AIR platform for the making of Smart TV apps is something that Adobe is pushing developers towards, as doing this will allow them to provide television apps with similar functionality to those being created using Flash.