Does Adobe’s announcement that it’s to ditch development of its Flash Player for mobile devices signal the end of Flash altogether?

The Flash plug-in enables movies, animation and games online and, when used well, can deliver enormously effective, dynamic and engaging web-based content. However, it’s always had its critics; initially because not all browsers had the plug-in and downloading it was always a hassle; then accessing the files could be very slow and it’s often used in inappropriate and even obstructive ways – remember all those sites with pointless and annoying animated intro sequences? There are still one or two around.

The death knell probably first sounded for Flash in April 2010 when Apple, or more specifically the late, great Steve Jobs, refused to support the technology under the pretext of security, reliability and battery life issues although it probably had more to do with Flash’s ability to play video and their Quicktime product.

Adobe’s reaction was to try and tough it out as Flash had become the dominant media player online. However, as the use of smart mobiles to access the internet has grown, those that use Flash found it cumbersome and a drain on battery life, plus there were those that couldn’t use it at all, namely the huge number of Apple iphones and ipads.

“Steve Jobs helped shift the whole industry to HTML 5, and 40 million iPads later it turned out that Flash wasn’t a selling point as many supposed.” said Colin Gillis, senior tech analyst at BGC Partners.

Then, on the 16th September this year, the final nail was probably hammered into Flash’s coffin when the other great operating system developers Microsoft, announced that they wouldn’t support Flash in the new web browser that works with their Metro interface on Windows 8 which is mostly likely to be used on tablets. Instead it had concentrated on the latest version of web technology HTML 5. Like Apple then.

Chris Green, technology analyst at Davies Murphy Group Europe, concludes “since so much of our internet use is now on mobile devices, it does questions the long-term viability of Flash full stop.”