Adobe announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress this month, that Flash Player 10, will be available on Smartphones running Windows Mobile, Google’s Android, Nokia S60 / Symbian, and Palm. These mobile devices with Flash Player 10 are expected to hit the market starting early 2010.

What about the iPhone?

In recent interview to Bloomberg Television, Adobe announced that onus is on them to create a well working version of Flash that runs on iPhone. Shantanu Narayan, CEO of Adobe, said:

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating [...] The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

Adobe already has a version of Flash for the iPhone running on emulation software. So far Apple seems to be interested of people developing applications using their Objective C as well as promoting Sproutcore, which is a JavaScript framework that compete with Flash.

I believe that the challenge in bringing Flash 10 to mobile is taking in consideration mobile constrains such as limited resources, platform awareness and adaptation. Taking desktop application and deploying them on mobile with usage of 3D graphics, sound and video can drain the battery pretty quickly and show poor performance. Adobe will most likely to create a version of Flash 10 that has reduced functionality, however has some additional APIs to be able to tap into the touch screen as well as the GPS or other hardware devices.