Flash Player downloads from Play Store to cease starting August 15
Last year, Adobe announced that it is going to stop the development of mobile Flash Player for Android. Adding further nails in that coffin, Adobe has now announced that Flash Player won"t be supported in Android 4.1. A prime example of this is the new Nexus 7 tablet, that ships without Flash support.
Furthermore, Adobe has announced that it will cease new Flash Player downloads from the Google Play Store, starting August 15. This means you will no longer see the Flash Player in the Play Store if it is not already installed on your device. Devices that already have the Flash Player installed will continue to receive minor updates and bug fixes post August 15.
Since the Flash Player is not supported in Android 4.1, Adobe is urging users to uninstall it before updating to Android 4.1, as it will not work properly. Also, any future updates to the Flash Player will not work under Android 4.1.
So it seems the era of Flash on Android has come to an end. What was once touted as a key selling point for Android devices is now being killed by its own maker. It doesn"t help that Google too wants to distance itself from this archaic technology, as seen by the lack of Flash support in Chrome for Android even under Android 4.0.
It goes without saying that Apple has been instrumental in bringing this change. Sooner or later everyone was going to realize that the emperor was wearing no clothes. It"s just that Apple was the first to point this out. Hopefully, the web developers will now finally wake up and adopt more modern technologies such as HTML5 for creating web content.
