Adobe says no Flash Player for Android 4.1, plans to withdraw app on Aug. 15

IDG News Service - There will be no certified implementations of Adobe Systems' Flash Player for Android 4.1, and on Aug. 15 the player will take a bow and no longer be available for download from Google's app store Play, Adobe said in blog post Thursday.

Adobe announced its plans to discontinue development of the Flash Player for mobile browsers last November, and is now revealing details of the timetable.

There will be no certified version of Flash Player for Android 4.1, which was announced earlier this week at Google's I/O developer conference. The certification refers to the work Adobe does with smartphone and tablet vendors to ensure the software works correctly when pre-loaded on a device.

Beginning on Aug. 15, Adobe will also use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to those devices that already have the player installed -- but only for older versions of Google's operating system. Once a device has been upgraded to Android 4.1, Adobe wants users to remove Flash Player. That's because the company hasn't continued developing and testing the application for this new version of Android and its browser options.

Still, users that today have a smartphone or tablet based on Android 4.0 or an older version of the operating system, and haven't installed the application are  recommended to download it before Aug. 15.

For developers, Adobe will instead concentrate on HTML5 and allowing them to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores, it said.

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