There will be no certified implementations of Adobe Systems' Flash Player for Android 4.1, and from Aug. 15 the player no longer be available for download from Google's app store Play, Adobe said on Thursday.
Last November Adobe announced that thery were focusing their work with Flash on PC browsing and mobile apps packaged with Adobe AIR, and would be discontinuing their development of the Flash Player for mobile browsers.
Today Adobe said that 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.
Beginning August 15th Adobe will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed. Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th.
The easiest way to ensure ongoing access to Flash Player on Android 4.0 or earlier devices is to use certified devices and ensure that the Flash Player is either pre-installed by the manufacturer or installed from Google Play Store before August 15th. Adobe recommends uninstalling Flash Player on devices which have been upgraded to Android 4.1.
For developers who need ongoing access to released versions of Flash Player for Android, those will remain available in the archive of released Flash Player versions. However, installations made from the archive will not receive updates through the Google Play Store.
"We made the decision to discontinue support for Android mobile browser because of two reasons: 1) Premium experiences on mobile devices are typically being delivered through apps and 2) Mobile websites mostly rely on HTML5 based video delivery," Adobe said in a blog post.
Devices with Flash Player already installed will continue to receive security updates, the company added.
Adobe is offering its Adobe AIR as a replacement to flash.
"AIR provides the same advanced Flash based video features, which means no changes to your content protection or video delivery infrastructure. AIR enables advanced video features for playback on Android 2.2+ devices, including Adobe Access DRM, live support, and adaptive streaming," the company said.
